Though owner Phillip Feemster has only been running the Outer Richmond's Clement Nursery for the past three years, he's actually the nursery's seventh owner. It's been in continuous existence for 75 years—since 1941. 

Its property at 1921 Clement St. is even older than that: the present lot and buildings date as far back as 1904, when they were originally part of a dairy farm.

Despite a recent makeover under its new ownership, Clement Nursery is still a living cross-section of the Richmond's history. The landlord's house, adjacent to the property, is the original farmhouse, while the garage that fronts the street and houses the nursery's office and houseplants was a stable, and still has an underground watering trough under the floor.

Feemster said the back building was originally the dairy's cookhouse—there's even a root cellar he had to board over, because raccoons kept using it for covert entry to the courtyard. 

Feemster bought Clement Nursery almost by chance from its previous owner. After 34 years in advertising ("I loved it for 28," he jokes), he was "looking for a big life change" when he happened to run into the owner, and heard the business was coming on the market. After working there for a day, he was hooked.

"I hadn't really thought about what that would be like," he said, but "I love plants so much ... I've been an avid gardener all my life. It's been like three years of learning genus, species, stuff like that."

How's he settling in? 

"It's a neighborhood nursery" and always has been, he said. "I focus on stuff that works" in the Richmond's climate. "If it grows here, it'll grow anywhere."

Feemster said that an ethos of sustainability has shaped the direction of the nursery and his approach to what he carries. "It's kind of trenched in being a responsible person in what we do," he said.

Clement Nursery offers a wide selection of native California plants, and everything it sells is raised organically, with no pesticides or chemicals.

The buildings themselves are sustainable, too: most of the structures that aren't original to the dairy farm are made from repurposed materials. For example, the roof to the new greenhouse is paneled with 49 shower doors from the 1980s, some of which still have etched pebbling or flamingos on them.

"When you've got so many unused resources around you, it makes sense to repurpose them," Feemster said. He wants his business to do its part to "help heal the environment."  

Feemster has also installed an array of birdbaths and other antique odds and ends in the nursery's courtyard, turning it into a habitat for birds.

"I see a hundred birds a day," he said. When he locks up at the end of the day, they're often bathing and coming in to roost. He hopes they'll "inspire people to think go think about their spaces differently ... I'm getting people to think more about how they garden."

Owning the nursery is "the hardest thing I've ever done," Feemster said. "But the benefits are things I'd never even thought about. I'm becoming part of a community ... That's fantastic, being part of a place and feeling part of a family."

"I don't know where it's going," he said, and that's part of the fun. "It's constantly changing. It's as though it's showing itself to me."