Nursery/Garden store
Deep Roots Garden Center
For 15 years, Jon Bell ran Deep Roots Garden Center out of a barn-like building at the corner of Sepulveda and 2nd Street in Manhattan Beach — a site that had been a nursery for six decades, most famously as Bob’s Nursery under Bob Brock. Bell started working there at 15, bought the business at 28, and built it into one of the most beloved small businesses in the South Bay. Then Manhattan Beach’s relentless march of development caught up with him too.
“Manhattan Beach is just, unfortunately, pricing themselves out,” Bell said. “They’re never going to see much in the way of mom and pop, or individually owned businesses anymore, unless it’s just basically an ultra-wealthy person looking for a little something to keep them busy. The rents are more than double if you go just a mile west of where we are now.”
So Bell did what the best of them do: he found a way forward. After a year of searching for a comparable space — a building with outdoor room for plants — he landed at 18420 Hawthorne Blvd. in Torrance, in a space three times the size of the old location. Unable to replicate the outdoor nursery model exactly, he leaned into what he could do: build out the most impressive indoor plant selection in the Los Angeles area. The new Deep Roots, which opened last year, is a fully indoor space of over 11,500 square feet, filled with everything from classic Monsteras to rare collector varieties, colorful new genetics, terrariums, cinnamon trees, and pottery to match.
“I wanted to bring in the biggest selection of houseplants that I possibly could,” Bell said. “That’s where a lot of the attention is right now. Indoor plants are just taking off, so we’re trying to corner that.”
What Bell also did during that year of searching and buildout was keep his crew of eight together, making sure that when the new location was ready, the familiar faces his customers had known for years would be there waiting.
“All my old customers get to come in and see the same familiar faces,” Bell said. “Deep Roots version 2.0.”
The customers have followed, if not in the massive wave Bell had hoped for, then steadily and surely. And he’s finding something unexpected at the new location: a broader South Bay, more diverse in age and background than the Manhattan Beach clientele he’d cultivated for so long.
“I’m getting more of what feels like L.A. as a whole now — all different cultures and ages coming in,” he said. “It’s been really great. That’s kind of refreshing.”
The trick, Bell says, is keeping the roots intact even when you’ve had to replant. By that measure, Deep Roots is doing just fine.
Deep Roots Garden Center
18420 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance
(310) 376-0567
