OUR STORY
SKY NURSERY IS PROUD
TO BE PART OF SHORELINE HISTORY
When longtime Seattleites Irene and Jim Landry opened Richmond Highlands Feed Store in 1953, no one could have imagined how it would grow. The store started out as one small building on a leased plot, selling more chicken feed and hardware than plants. Soon after, the Landrys sold their car and borrowed money to invest in a neighboring property: the same land Sky Nursery is on today.
The Richmond Highlands storefront in the early '50s.
A birds-eye-view of 185th & Aurora around 1953. You can see Dunn Lumber on the corner, and the small white building where Sky Nursery started out.
From there, Jim and Irene built their business piece by piece, adding new parcels of land and new buildings whenever they could afford to expand. The original store included just one small garden bed, where customers dug up their own shrubs to take home.
As the small farms that had once covered the area gave way to suburban homes, the Landrys adapted to the needs of the new community. They attended night school to study up on horticulture, built greenhouses, and began to focus on plants and garden supplies. In the early ‘60s they renamed the family business Sky Nursery.
The annual Midnight Garden party was a major attraction at Sky in the '60s.
Ron & Linda had just started school when their parents' store first opened.
WHY 'SKY?'
If you can believe it, the family chose the name after a vacation in Canada, in which every hotel they stayed at seemed to have "Sky" in its name. On the way home, Jim & Irene decided that was a fine name for a Nursery too.
Irene's father and the couple’s three children all pitched in to keep the family business going. The Landrys lived just a couple of blocks away, where they enjoyed a garden of their own. The kids — Jim Jr., Linda, and Ron — grew up making the rounds between home, school, and their parents’ store. They regularly spent their afternoons hauling bags of chicken feed or potting up plants in recycled metal drums. As for their parents, Jim Sr. focused on logistics while Irene became Sky’s original plant expert. She was known for taking excellent care of every customer who came through the door.
The Co-Founder of Sky Nursery, Jim Landry, who started the business with his wife Irene to help out his father-in-law, Robert. Linda remembers that Robert loved a friendly argument with his regular customers.
Irene, co-founder of Sky Nursery and a well loved mother and grandmother. She was the first ever horticulture expert to help customers at a Sky info booth.
"Dad was a worker,
always trying to make it by."
- Linda, on her father Jim
Through the decades, Sky Nursery has continued to grow with the community, while remaining the down-to-earth family business it has always been. Ron and Linda, who were just five and six years old when their parents started out, now own the business. Ron’s daughter, Brandy, is our general manager. Brandy’s two daughters have grown up helping out around here just like their mother and their grandfather before them.
All told, five generations of Landrys have worked alongside countless hardworking employees to make Sky Nursery what it is today. In fact, if you ask the Landrys, they will say its the employees who have shaped Sky the most.
The original Sky greenhouses, built in the '60s just north of 185th.
This place may have changed a lot since the Landrys sold sacks of grain, but our commitment to quality products, fantastic selection, and excellent customer service has remained the same. We look forward to serving our community for many years to come.
