Beloved Sacramento, CA gallery and store Public Land has answered the call of their Bay Area customers, opening a San Francisco location at 201 Clement Street over the weekend. The plant store and art gallery, known for its eclectic mix of rare cacti, tropical houseplants, and monthly rotating exhibitions, held its grand opening on Saturday evening with Madre Mezcal providing libations for the occasion.
For Austin McManus and Mel Eligon, the husband-and-wife team behind Public Land, the expansion represents more than just geographic growth. "For years, our Bay Area customers have said, 'You should open a shop in SF, you'd kill it,'" they explained on their website. "We finally took them up on the idea."
The timing is either incredibly bold or slightly masochistic, depending on your perspective. San Francisco's plant retail scene has been withering since the pandemic boom ended, with major casualties including The Sill, Plant Therapy, Little Trees, Terravita Plants, and Hortica all closing their doors in recent years, according to The San Francisco Standard. The post-COVID hangover has been severe enough to shutter multiple shops as demand has "dried up," leaving "a trail of sagging sales and shuttered shops."
From Art World to Plant World
McManus and Eligon aren't your typical plant shop owners. The couple met in San Francisco and spent time immersed in the art scenes of Los Angeles and New York before settling in Sacramento to open their first location in 2018. McManus previously served as photography director for Juxtapoz, the influential art and culture magazine, where he conducted artist interviews and contributed editorial content. Eligon worked as a freelance fashion editor before making the transition to retail.
Their shop name comes from a deeply personal place—countless camping trips to remote Bureau of Land Management areas, or "public lands," where they'd escape the cities they'd grown tired of. "We are city kids who just ended up going to nature way too much at some point because we got sick of the cities," McManus explained in a previous interview. "I think natural progression of camping and hiking is that you're going to start getting interested in the fauna and flora."
What started as desert wandering eventually evolved into Public Land—"the culmination of a lot of life lived," as McManus describes it. Their Sacramento location at 2598 21st Street in the Curtis Park neighborhood quickly gained a following for its unusual plant selection and monthly art exhibitions featuring California artists.
A Different Kind of Inner Richmond Addition
The new San Francisco space at 201 Clement Street joins what the owners describe as a vibrant strip of independent shops, restaurants, and small businesses that have long defined the character of the Inner Richmond neighborhood, according to The San Francisco Standard. The area has a track record of supporting unique retail concepts, from the legendary Green Apple Books to specialty food shops and the weekend Clement Street Farmers Market.
Public Land's approach differs significantly from traditional nurseries. The store functions as both retail space and gallery, with gear, plants, objects, and rotating art exhibitions. Their Sacramento location hosts events ranging from lectures on carnivorous plants to outdoor parking lot concerts, suggesting the SF outpost might bring similar programming to the Richmond.
The new space operates on a slightly compressed schedule compared to their Sacramento flagship—Thursday through Saturday from 11am to 6pm, and Sundays from 10am to 5pm. The San Francisco location is "more intimate in scale but just as layered in intention" as their original store, according to their website.
Betting Against the Trend
Public Land's expansion comes at a particularly challenging moment for plant retail in San Francisco. The city's pandemic-era plant frenzy has definitively ended, leaving established businesses struggling. David Gray, who shut down Castro nursery Hortica after nearly 30 years, told The Standard that amateur online plant sellers had "stolen the thunder" from brick-and-mortar shops during COVID.
Even longtime Richmond institution Clement Nursery, operating since 1937, has had to adapt to changing market conditions, according to Gardenista. The historic nursery, located just blocks away from Public Land's new spot, specializes in plants tough enough to survive the Richmond's harsh coastal winds—a practical approach that contrasts with Public Land's more artistic sensibility.
However, some industry observers remain optimistic about 2025. Plant store owners predict that economic uncertainty might lead people to spend money on home improvements rather than travel, potentially benefiting retailers who can successfully attract customers in the post-boom landscape.
For McManus and Eligon, the expansion represents their commitment to what they call "cultivating ecological literacy, supporting artistic expression, and fostering a slow commerce rooted in care, curiosity, and interconnection." Whether San Francisco's plant-buying public is ready to embrace that philosophy in sufficient numbers remains to be seen.
The new Public Land SF is located at 201 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA, with their original Sacramento location at 2598 21st Street, Sacramento, CA.
