For much of the century, the Kanto generation has kept the shelves of Hawthorn Nursery, with outside lots filled with seeds and fertilizer, fruit trees, potted plants and succulents.
This job has fallen for the past years to 70-year-old Kei Nakai and his brother David. But they will be the last one. When the brothers retire at the end of the month, they will also go to the 97-year-old nursery, and it will also go to the family and local history of almost a century.
“It’s time,” Nakai said.
Kei Nakai will appear in the Garden Center at Hawthorne Nursery.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
The nursery dates back to 1927, when it was started by Nakai, the grandfather of Kay and David, who moved from Japan to Vancouver, Canada in 1898 and moved to Hawthorn after their marriage. Today, it is one of the few remaining plant nurseryes in the Los Angeles area, opened by Japanese Americans before the US entered World War II at the end of 1941. Their citizens were forced into imprisonment camps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.
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In order to avoid being jailed in the camp, Nakae family fled to work at Sugarbeat Farm in Colorado, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. Another nursery owner in Gardena leased the property while they were gone, and when they returned to the end of the war, they purchased more land and expanded the nursery as they do today. I did.
Nakai says he will miss his parents’ home the most. It is a thin, green two-storey building adjacent to the nursery on Greville Avenue.
He pointed out the windows in his childhood bedroom and said he wanted to take some of the glass and old molded items before it was bulldozed at the time of sale. He said he hopes the land will turn into something lovely.
The size of 1927 was one of the items at Hawthorn Nursery in Hawthorn. Owner Kei Nakai says there are plenty of “old things” everywhere.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
There are a lot of “old things” everywhere, he said, making it difficult to decide what to hold and what to throw. Antique items are part of what is displayed on the walls of the nursery. This is the scale that has been there since the nursery opened. Retro blue sign from the 50s outside. “We’ll beautify Hawthorne for 97 years. Enjoy the outdoors. We’ll go gardening.”
They believe that the weathered trains used for storage are older than the nursery itself. He doesn’t know where it came from or how old it was, but he remembers that his father brought it to his property at some point. The Conservancy expressed interest in it, but he has not heard anything for a while.
The closure isn’t due to a lack of business, Nakai said. He refused to share revenue information, but said the business was on track and there was more support since the closure and sales were announced to clarify inventory.
Early on a recent Monday morning, the nursery was quieter than occasionally called by his brother David in the back room. It was far from the times of the COVID-19 pandemic when South Bay residents got stuck at home and came looking for plants to grow and distract themselves.
“This place was packed,” Nakai said. “It was never empty.”
Kei Nakai said he has been discussing retirement over the past 15 years and was just waiting for the right time.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
The man moved the boy into the store and asked when the door would be closed forever. “I love this place,” he told Nakai.
Kevin Baker, 45, frequently visited the area four years ago when he first moved to the area from Pacific Parisades. He visited weekly, then every month after two children were born and frequented after his schedule became busy. “I’m glad you saw it before closing,” he said.
Nakai said he has been discussing retirement over the past 15 years and was just waiting for the right time. As a child, he worked in the shop for his parents and made 25 cents a day. When he graduated from UCLA as an engineer in 1976, he said that government layoffs at the end of the Vietnam War meant making jokes to work outside of university. It makes sense for him to take over the business instead.
His own children, now in their 30s, are happy with their careers and are not interested in taking over, he said.
Memorial items cover the walls of Hawthorn Nursery. The Nakai family “really lived, breathed and thrived in the plant world,” said another nursery owner.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
The Nakai family brings a century of knowledge and skills to gardening operations, said Russell Akiyama, third-generation owner of the Sunflower Farm Nursery near Torrance. “They really lived, breathed and thrived in the plant world,” he said.
The Northern deer spent time studying the genus Dudoria, a succulent native to the West Coast, contributing to its taxonomy, or scientific classification. In a presentation recorded at Rancho Santa Anabotanic Garden in 1992, a young north deer flips through the photos and explains various species of Dodoria plants.
And David Nakai “we managed to grow something out of the rock,” Akiyama joked. He recalls seeing David spread the flourishing flats of White Wisteria. And he said that the nursery passion fruit, which Akiyama called “the best passion fruit you’ve ever tasted,” lives in the Sunflower Farm collection.
As Hawthorn’s nursery prepares for closing, Akiyama was cultivated decades ago when the Nakai family and other Japanese-American nursery owners drove around Torrance, Gardena and nearby cities. He said it brings comfort to see the impact he has while looking at the trees. .
“Our landscaping is like a monument that we are as much as ours as ours,” he said. “There’s no perfect goodbye. It’s just ‘See you later.’ ”
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