Their grandfather came to America and opened a nursery. A century later, it’s closing
- Share via
For the better part of a century, generations of the Nakai family have kept the shelves at Hawthorne Nursery stocked with seeds and fertilizers, the lot outside full of fruit trees, potted plants and succulents.
The job, for the past many years, has fallen to Kei Nakai, 70, and his brother, David. But they will be the last. When the brothers retire at the end of the month, the 97-year-old nursery and, with it almost a century of family and local history, will go too.
“It’s time,” Nakai said.
The nursery dates to 1927, when it was started by Kei and David’s grandfather, Minegusu Nakai, who had emigrated from Japan to Vancouver, Canada, in 1898 and moved to Hawthorne after marrying. Today, it is one of the few remaining plant nurseries in the Los Angeles area that were opened by Japanese Americans before the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941. Shortly after, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S., many of them citizens, were forced into incarceration camps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Taking what they could carry, they sold or left behind their homes, possessions and businesses.
Sign up for our L.A. Times Plants newsletter
At the start of each month, get a roundup of upcoming plant-related activities and events in Southern California, along with links to tips and articles you may have missed.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
To avoid being imprisoned in a camp, the Nakai family fled to work on a sugar beet 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 at the end of the war they purchased more land to expand the nursery into what it is today.
Kei Nakai says he’ll miss the most his parents’ home — a skinny, green two-story building that adjoins the nursery on Grevillea Avenue.
He pointed out his childhood bedroom window and said he wants to take a pane of glass and part of the old molding to make a commemorative frame before it’s bulldozed when they sell. He said he hopes the land is turned into something nice.
There is so much “old stuff” everywhere, he said, it’s hard to decide what to keep and what to toss. Antique items are part of what’s left on display across the nursery’s walls: A scale that’s been there since the nursery opened. The ‘50s retro blue sign outside. A letter board above the register that reads, “Beautifying Hawthorne for 97 years. Enjoy the outdoors. Go gardening.”
A weathered train car used for storage — older than the nursery itself, he thinks — might go too, Nakai said. He isn’t sure where it came from or how old it is, though he remembers his father bringing it onto the property at some point. The conservancy expressed some interest it in, but he hasn’t heard anything in a while.
Are you growing food, flowers and other plants on a patio, balcony or deck? Tell us about your small-space container garden so we can share what you’ve learned.
The closure isn’t for a lack of business, Nakai said. He declined to share revenue information but said the business was doing well and there’s been an additional boost since the closure — and sales to clear inventory — was announced.
Early on a recent Monday morning, the nursery was quiet other than an occasional phone call answered by his brother, David, in a back room. It was a far cry from the days during the COVID-19 pandemic, when South Bay residents were stuck at home and came looking for plants to cultivate and distract.
“This place was packed,” Nakai said. “It was never empty.”
A man wheeled his baby boy into the store to ask when the doors will shut for good. “I love this place,” he told Nakai.
Kevin Baker, 45, frequented the shop when he first moved to the area from Pacific Palisades four years ago, drawn by the rare or interesting offerings not easily found at other nurseries, he said. He visited weekly, then monthly, then less frequently after his two children were born and his schedule got busier. “I’m glad I got to see it before it closed,” he said.
Somehow the Eaton fire spared thousands of camellias and azaleas at 90-year-old Nuccio’s Nurseries. Now they desperately need water to stay alive.
Nakai said he has been discussing retirement over the last 15 years and was just waiting for the right time. As a kid he worked for his parents in the shop and made 25 cents a day. When he graduated from UCLA in 1976 as an engineer, he said, government layoffs at the end of the Vietnam War meant he’d be jockeying for work right out of college. It made sense for him to take over the business instead.
His own children, now in their 30s, are happy with their own careers and have no interest in taking over, he said.
The Nakai family brings a century of knowledge and skill to its horticulture work, said Russell Akiyama, a third- generation owner of the nearby Sunflower Farms Nursery in Torrance. “They really did live, breathe and thrive in the plant world,” he said.
Nakai spent time studying the Dudleya genus, succulents native to the West Coast, and contributed to its taxonomy, or scientific classification. In a presentation recorded in 1992 at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, a younger Nakai flips through pictures and describes different species of Dudleya plants.
And David Nakai “could make something grow out of a rock,” Akiyama joked. He recalled once seeing David propagating a flourishing flat of white wisteria, which is particularly hard to grow, and wondered how he’d managed to do it. And the nursery’s passion fruit, which Akiyama called “the best passion fruit you’ve ever tasted,” will live on in Sunflower Farms’ own collection, he said.
As Hawthorne Nursery prepares to close, Akiyama said he takes solace in seeing the influence the Nakai family and other Japanese American nursery owners have had when he drives through neighborhoods in Torrance, Gardena and other cities nearby and sees trees cultivated by the nursery owners decades ago.
“Our landscaping is just as much of a monument to who we are as our buildings,” he said. “There is no full, total goodbye. It’s just an, ‘I’ll see you later.’”
Inside the business of entertainment
The Wide Shot brings you news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
