What do/did they sell?

They started in Marin county north of San Francisco where the cost is not very important. The owner,founder, Hawken, sold out to the Scott's family of companies some years ago. I never found anything they sold, I could not find elsewhere for less money. Al

S & H used to be a great company where you could find (catalog too) high quality tools and unusual garden goods. That pretty much ended about the time Scott's took over..... as you said ordinary stuff at high prices. Is it any wonder they are going out of business.

I haven't shopped there for years and years. I enjoyed browsing through the beautiful but pricey and usually unnecessary items they sold. My hose will never hide in a hand-hammered copper pot, or curve around cast iron hose guides in the shape of charming little birds... (sigh...) and I won't be growing my designer paperwhites under a heavy glass bell. Such a pity, the catalogues were good for stimulating the imagination. But in the end my garden never was a good match for the fantasy they were selling.

Catkim, your garden may not have been a good match, but it sure is much more interesting and spectacular than anything in Smith and Hawkin. And I LOVE that fake nineteenth century garden style they featured.

Yah, all I bought was the seeds they carried, since to order them directly I would have had to pay shipping. They carried "seeds of change" brand seeds. And I got some amarylis bulbs around X-mas when they would be 50 percent off.
But otherwise, all their stuff was way too expensive and available elsewhere for less. The store I went to was in a ritzy shopping center in the middle of an area where rich people live. So there you go.

ccroulet, SH started off importing the best english garden tools that people could still use 20-30 years later. Ironically, in light of its later owner, SH was founded on the ideals of organic gardening.

But, in its latest incarnation, it became this lifestyle brand for its customers to aspire to- it sold some plants, some tools, garden furniture, garden decor, scott products, etc.. And, to further broaden its appeal, it also had a less expensive bridge line exclusive to Target.

So, is there anything that SH carries that anybody here would recommend buying? I didn't get a good look at their products as I had to go to Williams-Sonoma that day, which I suspect is not long for this world either.

Is there some type of gardening version of Cook's Illustrated, which does equipment reviews for the kitchen, that does review for garden equipment? (I've always been curious about the Oxo garden products that are popping up). Or, any garden tool review?

I know SH prices are high, probably even higher for the same product elsewhere. But, with this liquidation, especially as sale percentage increases, SH's prices are going to be cheaper for once, right?

I still have my English bulldog shovel that I got from them at least twenty years ago, still looks as good as new despite constant use. I can still remember the guilty pleasure of shelling out FIFTY bucks for a decent shovel. Now-a-days, that seems cheap! I'll really be bummed when it finally goes, since it will probably be impossible to replace at any price.

If you attend the major garden shows, you will find that Lee Valley Tools usually has a booth there with products you can examine. If you buy they will ship from their New York location with no shipping charge. I have wonderful stainless steel shovels from them. Al

for years i did like to go to smith and hawkins in los gatos on very rare shopping and lunch trips with friends, and always thought their holiday displays were the best. all i ever bought tho, was a string of lights one christmas - anything else would have blown my budget. i'm sorry to see them go but i'm not at all surprised. min

That is sad to hear. As a kid I used to go to their flagship store in downtown mill valley and an old boyfriend used to model for their catalog ;)

Founders: 'Smith & Hawken Opportunity Squandered'

By Tom Ryan

Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. announced last week that it would close its remaining 56 Smith & Hawken stores by the end of 2009. But both founders expressed relief because the chain had long abandoned its original values.

"Scotts couldn't have been a worse corporate owner," Paul Hawken told the Marin Independent Journal. "Smith & Hawken had become just a ghost of itself."

Smith and Hawken opened their first retail store in Mill Valley in California in 1982 with a goal of providing organic gardeners with handcrafted tools from England with a lifetime guarantee. It eventually became an early role model for socially responsible companies.

Smith & Hawken changed owners a number of times, including a sale to CML in 1993, to DDJ Capital in 1999, and Scott in 2004. But the founders were particularly upset by the sale to Scott, best known for its Miracle-Gro plant food and Ortho weed killer.

"When Scotts bought it and Smith & Hawken was owned by the largest pesticide seller in the U.S., I suggested people boycott it," Mr. Hawkens said. "It had completely lost its roots."

Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, Mr. Smith said, "It's a boom time in the gardening business and Smith & Hawken is going down the tube because it went way off the roots of the company and became a frou-frou, knick-knack kind of store, instead of a serious gardening store."

At the time of the 2004 acquisition, Scott said it was hoping Smith & Hawken would expand the company beyond its "grow and kill" products and increase its appeal to women. Its initial plan was to turn Smith & Hawken into an outdoor living and gardening product line to sell to stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's.

"That proved to be a strategy we could not execute," Scott's spokesman Jim King, told the Chronicle. "It left us with a specialty retailer, and that's not who we are. We never meant to keep it as a stand-alone retail operation."

Meanwhile, the store branched out into outdoor living products such as furniture, fire pits, lighting and garden décor.

"How could you possibly have a gardening store in this economy and go wrong?" Mr. Hawken said. "I'll tell you why. This wasn't a gardening store anymore."

Scott said it was unable to find a buyer for the struggling chain.

Said Scotts' CEO Jim Hagendorn, "Unfortunately, the combination of a weak economy and the lack of scale proved too great to overcome."

I got a "thank you and farewell" email from Smith and Hawkin a couple of weeks ago. I must have been on their list because I'd recently bought an outdoor rug from them. I'm happy with the rug, and the price was competitive. It's the first thing I've purchased from them in several years.

I'm not sure when they started marketing stuff that made them something other than what the founders call a "serious gardening store," but the teak bench I bought from their catalog is almost 20 years old. It's still in fine shape. It was the smallest, least expensive bench they carried then, probably 500 dollars including shipping. It felt like a major investment in the landscape of the house we'd just bought in Virginia.

The metal Monet arch I trained a wisteria to climb is also in fine shape after half a dozen years.

The bird-shaped hose guides someone mentioned really do keep me from mowing down the lavender at the edge of a bed. And they make me smile.

Finally, I bought an oversized wicker basket that they'd copied from one used by Gertrude Jekyll--the photo in the catalog of Miss Jekyll showed her standing next to a small child sitting in the basket. I use it every time I weed or cut back my perennials. I wish I'd bought two of them. I hope it outlasts me.

I may have fallen for the fantasy the Smith and Hawkin catalogs sold because I had to relearn so much about gardening when I moved to Virginia from Southern California. But without a dash of fantasy and imagination, all of the ordinary tasks of daily life can become so, well, ordinary.

Target Stores are carrying Smith and Hawkin in a lesser amount but had some great decorating things on clearance.

I got another chance to go see SH at the South Coast Mall,and came prepared this time with a book, 'Smith & Hawken The Tool Book'.

The book was published in 97, and it kind of shows how far the company has changed since then. In that book, its all about garden tools, which I'm assuming SH carried back then. That book covered all these different garden tools from everything like spades to shovels to forks to weeders to propogating tools to watering cans and so on and so on. And, just for spades alone,they talked about 16 different spades and what their uses were for and how to tell if it was a quality spade or not.

After reading that book, I was ready to invest in some quality gardening tools. But, when I went inside their store, the tools they had were relegated to a sad, lonely corner. Instead of having multiple types of spades or shovels like in the book, they'd only have one type and that was it.

And,you were missing all the different brands for different tools in today's store that the book had covered. For example, in the section for hand pruners, they had 18 different varities from different companies like Felco, Corona, Fiskars, Levat, Sandvik, Freund, etc...

But, in today's SH, it seemed like I only saw three different tool makers- some company for all the Japanese garden tools, Felco for hand pruners, and Smith Hawken brand for everything else for all the tools.

Felco is what I really wanted, but they were already sold out at 20% sale even though there were plenty of SH tools left. The SH hand pruner was still going to be expensive, albeit less expensive than the Felco, but I had no assurance of quality like I had with the Felco.