Banking on growth
For Jere Gettle, the seed of an idea sprouts quickly. That includes the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog business he started 12 years ago at age 17, as well as his most recent venture, a California store where West Coast gardeners can choose from more than 1,200 heirloom seed varieties in person.
In March 2009, Jere, who also owns Bakersville Pioneer Village in Mansfield, Mo., home of his original heirloom seed store and authentic pioneer town, took off for California with his wife, Emilee, in search of a site for a new seed store. “We drove along the coast from Southern California to Northern California looking for the right space,” said Jere.
It wasn’t until the couple hit Petaluma, a San Francisco Bay-Area suburb, with a charming historic downtown, that they knew they’d found it. There at the hub of the town’s main boulevard was a “For Lease” sign in one of the tall, arched windows of a towering 1920s Roman Renaissance Revival-style building. Jere was immediately taken with its elegantly curved façade topped by an elaborate, classical balustrade, but more importantly, the building’s character and history perfectly complemented the heirloom seeds he travels the world to collect.
Open for business
In June, just two months later, after making their way through mounds of required paperwork, Jere and Emilee opened their new heirloom seed and gardening gift store in the grand Petaluma building, which was once the Sonoma County branch of Bank of America, and aptly named their new business the Seed Bank.
Jere had the locals buzzing right away as he brought in Amish workers in plain clothing and traditional hats to help him set up shop, as well as fellow Missourian Greg Clemens to hand paint huge vegetables and gigantic letters spelling “Rare Seed” on the building’s mammoth windows.
