Matt Day remembers driving all over the Bay Area looking for an actual brick-and-mortar house for Planterday, then a pop-up plant shop operating out of a used trailer he had retrofitted himself in 2019.
After selling the store’s one-of-a-kind products primarily online during the lockdown, Day and her partner, Yumi Look, were eager to finally establish permanence. Finding herself in Rockridge, she realized the location was perfect. Planterday opened on College Avenue in July 2021.
“Rockridge is a friendly and welcoming community,” says Day. “There are a lot of other amazing little businesses here. Those two things combined drive foot traffic onto the avenue. We love when new people find us just by walking or driving, it shows us that the location is working.”
When Day launched the company in 2019, it had been a year since her mother’s death from cancer tipped her usual stability on its axis. Overwhelmingly heartbroken, he left a senior leadership position at a tech company and spent a year unemployed, eventually receiving mental health care to much of his grief.
Years earlier, when Day was 10 years old, his father committed suicide. With the loss of his mother, a long-buried pain resurfaced and nearly swallowed him.
“After my father committed suicide, my mother was committed to mental institutions for several years,” says Day. “I was hopping from house to house with my mother’s sisters. I went to 24 different schools between elementary school and college. At every school I went to, I was talking to counselors. I couldn’t say the word ‘daddy’ without crying.
“I remember when my uncle broke the news about my dad to me and my brother. I withdrew completely. My brother cried and asked why he would do that when he was the best father in the world. When my mom died, everything came back. I was there when she took her last breath from her. I walked out of that hospital knowing I wouldn’t be the same.”
Day drew in part on a phrase learned from her mother, “help begins at home.” He embraced healing practices that she had become involved in that link mental health and therapy with plants, nature, and nurture. Without insurance to cover mental health care, he struggled to get help, spending up to $1,000 a month out of pocket, knowing many people can’t muster the same resources.
Day says “home” to him means community and that this belief drives Planterday’s plant-driven mission to de-stigmatize and raise awareness of mental health. It’s a calling that says it feels deeply, especially in communities of color where the topic may be taboo or overlooked among other concerns. A portion of the proceeds from Planterday go to the local suicide prevention nonprofit, Crisis Support Services (CSS) of Alameda County.
“Our main community association is with them. It works because it brings me into the service organization where Yumi and I grew up. In addition, they offer school services, group healings, and free phone and text crisis support for various communities. They care a lot about being intentional with their services, so they are expanding to help more people in the Bay Area.”
Look says the partnerships sought in addition to the current one with the Alameda County CSS often involve local artists and small businesses owned by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) or LGBTQ entrepreneurs.
“We have Paola Lagunas prints, posters and decals, locally produced artisan watering cans, plants from Brown Girl Farms and others. Partners and partnership events are reflections of us, of ourselves.”
Upon opening the store in 2021, Look left her full-time job as an elementary school teacher in the Oakland Unified School District. She does all the ordering and runs the day-to-day operations, while Day has returned to work full-time at Headspace, part of Headspace Health, a mental health and wellness provider.
On her days off and in the evenings, Day handles behind-the-scenes tasks such as billing, licensing, and payroll for the three newly added part-time employees. He says Look brings a Montessori-like order to the store.
“Everything has a cubicle and a label that explains what it is and what is the best care. It’s a high-level organization, so when people come in and have questions, they can look at information cards in the store,” she says.
If the questions are about mental health, a kiosk filled with brochures allows visitors to find answers and resources. Look says that they are always eager to strike up a conversation.
“We do more than just plant queries, like when to water, what light is needed, how to propagate new plants, or answers to ‘What’s wrong with this plant?’ Our philosophy is that there is no pressure to buy something. The main thing we want people to leave is something new that they have learned. It gives us joy to share what we know.”
Planterday, as it grows, will continue to sell fittonias, divided monsteras, pothos, moles, and other related plants and garden products, mostly locally sourced. Then there are the rare “starter plants” that Day propagates at home and sells at cost for just dollars, compared to market rates that might have a leaf cutting priced at $50 and a full-size plant at $50. 1,000.
“We don’t make any money from them, but I get to share my plants, and it’s more to spread the joy.”
Having outgrown the mobile pop-up phase, they sold the Planterday trailer after it gathered dust for 10 months in their uncle’s driveway in Castro Valley. However, big futuristic dreams of Planterday remain.
“We fantasized about having a bigger campus, turning it into a retail space, a greenhouse nursery, a room for counseling and therapy services, and a community garden,” says Look. “This is a mode of incubation that we expect to grow. By having a children’s section, I have science books that I would like to prepare for children to come in and learn by reading.”
Day’s dreams include hosting more small businesses to give them an edge, offering after-hours events such as intimate grief dinners, writers’ workshops, book readings, open mic nights and art installations. First on your list? He says being able to quit his full-time job and be in the store connecting with customers every day is the ultimate goal.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Contact her at [email protected].
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