History

The idea for a store grew out of a weekly dinner of graduate students. Founder Tom Bressan was a member of that group. The concept grew into a “New Age” hardware store called Living Lightly. As Tom developed the gardening section including drip irrigation, he wrote both informational pieces and a manual on Drip irrigation best practices. That attention blossomed into the founding of The Urban Farmer in 1981 with John Stokes. The new company focused on agricultural drip components to be used in the urban setting, thus the name.

The Urban Farmer Store originated selling by mail and installing, locally, drip irrigation out of Tom’s garage. In 1983, the first store was opened on Taraval St and relocated to the current San Francisco location (40^th Avenue and Vicente St in the Sunset District) in 1986.

In the late 1990s, we opened our second store in Mill Valley. Shortly after that, in 2002, The Urban Farmer Store built a store in the Richmond annex in the East Bay (co-located on a large parcel with American Soil & Stone). This store provided the warehouse and yard space to purchase in better quantities and serve as a supplier to the two other stores with smaller footprints.

The Urban Farmer Store has flourished over the years by developing and retaining the industry’s most knowledgeable staff, carrying professional grade products, and through our commitments to customer education and dedication to community involvement.