Haster Grove loses its bloom

BARBARA DIAMOND

Rogers Gardens made no friends in Laguna Beach by closing its

offspring, Haster Grove.

“People were in tears when I got here,” Kathleen Abel said.

Abel was among those who flocked to the nursery Friday morning

after seeing the announcement of the closing in local papers.

Starr Allumbaugh, vice president of marketing and sales for the

parent company, said the decision to close the successful nursery was

a difficult one.

“The store was doing very well, but business at Rogers Gardens is

growing by leaps and bounds and it was felt that we had to

concentrate on one location,” Allumbaugh said.

Allumbaugh declined to discuss the terms of the lease, which

included the building at 1370 S. Coast Highway that housed gifts,

books and decorative items, as well as indoor plants. A separate back

parcel that fronts on Glenneyre Street contained the majority of

nursery stock, stock, pots, statuary, soil amendments and the parking

lot.

“I was surprised that Rogers Gardens pulled the plug,” property

owner Charlie Kinstler said. “The lease only runs to March 2005,

although they had a 10-year option they could have exercised.”

Kinstler said he offered to buy the nursery from Rogers Gardens,

took a week to get his ducks in a row and came back to the table to

find the price had been raised.

“I would have hired a local manager and kept all those nice

employees,” Kinstler said. “It’s sickening.” Kinstler has his primary

home in Downey on an acre of property, but he claims strong ties to

Laguna Beach.

“My parents and my aunt owned homes in Laguna since 1967,”

Kinstler said. “I know a nursery is not the highest and best use of

that property -- we could build commercial in front with offices

above and parking and residential units in the back.

“But I am an avid gardener. The city needs a nursery. If anyone

has interest, they can call me at (562) 904-2288.

Nursery neighbor Richard Challis said based on the number of

vehicles he saw in the parking lot he doubts business was really

brisk at the nursery, no matter what Rogers Gardens people said. He

thinks the property will be developed.

A couple of years ago, Challis declined to sell the corner parcel

he owns next to the nursery to Kinstler.

“I want to leave the product of my years of work to benefit my

loved ones,” said Challis, a pioneering Laguna Beach art gallery

owner.

The nursery is set to close Oct. 30 -- assuming there is anything

left to sell by then.

You couldn’t find a parking space within a block on Saturday.

Newlyweds Anne Cox and Niclas Kruger bought three rosebushes to

add to the colorful cottage garden that brightens their street. They

also bought a hanging planter and several pots. Adrienne Agnew pushed

a cartload of Gerberas around the nursery, looking for an edible

passion fruit tree.

“Everyone in Australia has one in their yard,” said the

transplant.

Customers patiently waited in line for 30 minutes or more on

Saturday, carts filled to capacity and then some. Statues practically

walked out of the grounds. Trellises were tagged for later pickups

One woman was disappointed to learn she couldn’t buy the bed used for

display in the room that featured white and green plants and

containers. The bed is privately owned.

Over and over, as they paid their bills, customers lamented the

closing, telling employees, “I am so sad” -- “I am devastated. And

over and over, employees replied, “We are too.”

The staff will be transferred to Rogers Gardens, Allumbaugh said.

Haster Grove celebrated its grand opening March 16, 2002.

Councilman Wayne Baglin, then mayor, cut the ribbon on the revival of

a Laguna icon.

For more than 50 years, Laguna Beach gardeners bought plants and

got advice at “Pete’s Place,” the locals’ name for the Laguna

Nursery.

Takashi “Pete” Kawaratani bought the raw land for the nursery

after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, with the help of

Merle Ramsey, author with his wife, Mabel, of the First 100 Years in

Laguna Beach 1876-1976,” “Pioneer Days of Laguna Beach and “This Was

Mission Country.”

“People were reluctant to sell to Japanese right then,” said son,

Steve Kawaratani, a landscape designer, Coastline Pilot garden

columnist and chair of the city’s Design Review Board.

The nursery opened in February 1948. Bessie Kawaratani, who was

interred during the war, kept the books for her husband.

Almost until the very end of his life, “Pete” puttered around the

nursery, kept open even though the business was losing money.

“I wouldn’t close it because of him,” Kawaratani said.

When “Pete” died in 2001, the property was sold to Kinstler. A

Laguna Beach friend opened and very shortly thereafter closed “Secret

Garden.”

Rogers Gardens then stepped in.

“I think the Kawaratani Family will be pleased at the legacy that

has been reborn by Rogers Gardens at Haster Grove,” Baglin said at

the grand opening. “So much of what Pete built here has been

preserved. I was exceptionally pleased.”

He’s not so pleased now.

“I was totally shocked when I saw the ad,” Baglin said. “I am

greatly disappointed. I have a very, very heavy feeling that someone

will come in and try to develop something we won’t like.

“It will be looked at very critically for mass, view blockage and

parking. They should be careful to come in with something that fits.”

He cited the affordable housing project on Glenneyre Street, on

which the developer worked closely with neighbors and the city.

“They made it work and the developer of the nursery property needs

to look at that and others like it and come in with a project that is

not an imposition on the neighborhood.

The Haster Grove motto was “Begin a life well lived with Haster

Grove.”

But not for long.

* OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline

Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box

248, Laguna Beach, 92652, hand-deliver to 384 Forest Ave., Suite 22;

call (949) 494-4321 or fax (949) 494-8979.