Smith and Hawken will be Shut Down

Smith & Hawken to close stores, including six in Bay Area

Thirty years after Dave Smith and Paul Hawken founded gardening tool importer Smith & Hawken in Mill Valley, the company will be shut down by the weed killer maker that purchased it in 2004.

Ohio-based parent company Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. said Wednesday that it will cease all Smith & Hawken business by the end of 2009, having a hired a liquidator, Gordon Brothers Group of Boston, to help it do so.

The move calls for the closure of all of Smith & Hawken’s 56 retail stores in the U.S. and the layoff of the company’s 700 employees nationwide, including 70 at its corporate offices at Hangar Four in Hamilton Landing and 30 at its retail store in the Strawberry Village shopping center in Mill Valley.

Some of those employees will be kept on through early December to help with the liquidation of the company’s inventory, all of which will occur through its stores. All inquiries to the Novato headquarters and the Mill Valley store were directed to the Scotts corporate office in Ohio. There are five other Smith and Hawken stores in the Bay Area, in Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Los Gatos, Palo Alto and Burlingame.

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