Mizuki Nursery is closing in face of competition

For 48 years, Bill Mizuki ran his family's Rainier Valley nursery, working seven days a week, taking off only for a brief fishing trip in Alaska once a year.

Though he officially closed the nursery for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, his daughter, Lynn Nishimura, remembers that even on those days, her father managed to sneak in a few hours at G. Mizuki Nursery & Landscaping.


	Samuel Zambrana prepares trees for the final sale at G. Mizuki Nursery & Landscaping. The nursery, begun in 1947, is closing June 30. Phil H. Webber / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

After Mizuki died in September, the family decided to close the business, which Mizuki's parents started in 1947.

The nursery will shut its doors for good June 30, Nishimura said.

"My dad loved it," she said. "But none of us in the family have that same love for gardening. I have a black thumb. My idea of what you do with plants after you get them is sell them."

Still, Nishimura said she's sad to let go of the business that she and her brothers -- and later their children -- grew up with.

The nursery has struggled to make money, with competition from mass-market retailers, and Nishimura and her siblings aren't ready to take on the challenge of running the business, she said.

"The big companies, like Home Depot, came in and they sell everything really cheaply," she said. "For the past 10 years, it really just wasn't as viable of a business as it had been in the past."

Indeed, industry experts say that the big retail chains have put the squeeze on independent garden shops.

"The mass merchants have so much volume involved, they get lower (wholesale) prices," said Carol Miller, editor of Garden Center Merchandising & Management magazine. "But they also have fairly narrow inventory."

But the competition from chain retailers also has forced independent garden store owners to work harder to carve out their own identities, Miller said, creating loyal customers.

At Mizuki Nursery earlier this week, many of those at the store said they'd shopped there for decades.

Eloise Strain, a longtime neighborhood resident and customer, stopped on her way out of the store to ask about Japanese cucumbers.

But Mizuki isn't selling any vegetables starts this year as it prepares to close.

"I always enjoyed them," Strain said. "I don't know where I'll find them now."

As Strain and a few other customers milled around the nursery, employees remembered their boss.

Samuel Zambrana, who has worked at the store since 1989 and studied agriculture at universities in his native Bolivia and in Europe, said he was struck by how much Mizuki knew.

"Bill had never studied at a university, but he knew almost as much as someone who had," Zambrana said. "He knew about everything -- the soil, the plants."

In the midst of reminiscing yesterday afternoon, a customer came in, clutching piece of a rose bush and requesting a diagnosis.

After examining the plant's curled leaves, Zambrana determined that the plant had a pest problem.

When asked whether he'd miss the store, Wayne Spears, the customer with the rose bush, said he would. Then he paused. Together, he, Mizuki's stepson Bryan Urakawa and Mako Fujihira, a longtime employee and friend of the Mizuki family, recalled the days when the nursery was bordered by a swamp.

Urakawa said his stepfather watched the neighborhood grow and change around the family's nursery. When the family first opened the store after World War II, during which they were interned, they lived on a seven-acre plot, in a house behind the nursery.

Over the years, the family sold pieces of its property. Just three-quarters of an acre is left.

Nishimura said that the family is talking to Sound Transit about selling some of the land to the agency for its light rail project.

She said the family did consider, briefly, trying to find a buyer for the business before deciding to liquidate the nursery and sell the property.

"How do you pass that name on to someone else?" she asked.

P-I reporter Marni Leff can be reached at 206-448-8142 or marnileff@seattlepi.com

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