Hida Tool and The Gardener offer everything from weeding knives to a decorative dandelion seed head in a clear cube.
BERKELEYSIDE – September 30, 2026
Two West Berkeley stores with roots going back to the 1980s have gardening in common, but are very different places with one specializing in utility and the other focused on delight.
Hida Tool & Hardware Co. on San Pablo Avenue in the Gilman District is a compact shop, filled with high-quality Japanese knives and gardening tools — a very practical place. While nearby in the Fourth Street retail district, The Gardener is somewhere to get both tools and plants, as well as plant-inspired gifts for a gardener or simply a garden-lover. Think rosemary-mint bath salts or a clothes hook that resembles a tree branch.
Both are being honored by the City of Berkeley as part of its new Legacy Business Program.
The Gardener
Despite having been a fixture on Fourth Street for more than 40 years, The Gardener feels very modern in its boutique aesthetic, curating the latest looks for home and garden: seasonal plants, high-end gardening supplies, various collections of terra cotta pots, tableware, soaps and door handles.
Shoppers walking through the front doors are greeted by a strong, vaguely floral scent that almost seems designed to lure them in. But it’s all natural and seasonal like the huge foraged fennel hanging in an alcove, said Sarah Lonsdale, the store’s chief retail officer.
“It’s bringing the outside in,” she said, which has been the company’s concept from the start. The Gardener was founded in 1984 by Alta Tingle, who wanted to create a place that inspired curiosity, discovery, community and conversation about gardening and decor.
“Every piece of The Gardener was done with intention,” said Jaemie Ballesteros, a friend and financial adviser to Tingle since 2006, when the two met when Tingle was on the Chez Panisse board. Ballesteros has been The Gardener’s CEO since 2025.
That’s true down to the floor itself, with stone tiles near the entryway that transition to wood. “You walk through the seasons as you walk through the store,” Ballesteros said. And “every time you walk through, you discover something. Long before you just went (online) and bought it, Alta was bringing it to you.”
Though Tingle is now nearing 90, the store’s employees (who themselves have spent more than 100 combined years working there) remain focused on building upon their founder’s style rather than altering it. And that’s not only because Tingle herself occasionally stops in.
“The foundation Alta created, it was something unusual and it delighted people,” Lonsdale said “I think it’s our job to continue delighting people.”
They do that with a range of experiential offerings as well. They will be offering Kintsugi classes through Nov. 22, with the in-store pop-up POJ Studio, brought straight from Japan. They are also hosting monthly tea tastings with Two Trees Tea House, purveyors of organic, single-origin loose-leaf teas from small-scale and marginalized farming communities in Nepal and China. The next tasting is Sunday, Oct. 4 and free to the public.
Hida Tool & Hardware Co.
Stepping inside Hida Tool & Hardware in the Gilman District feels like leaving busy San Pablo Avenue and landing in a little, warehouse-like shop in Japan. Shelves are stacked high with goods — most with Japanese labels. None of this has changed much over the years, said store manager Kosuke (Kou) Minamizaki. Though he began working there in 2011 as a knife sharpener, he’s known the small shop for much longer: his parents own the business.
“Everything we sell except for gloves and T-shirts is from Japan,” Minamizaki said. That ranges from kitchen cutlery to traditional gardening and woodworking tools. They’ve also developed a reputation among locals as a great place to get knives sharpened.
Customers are drawn by the quality of the Japanese steel products, which “all last longer” than other knives and tools, Minamizaki said. Top-selling products include a powdered stainless steel santoku knife forged by world-renowned cutlery maker Takamura and a garden pruner made by Tobisho, a legendary blacksmithing shop in a region once famed for making Samurai swords. There are also hori-hori digging and weeding knives beloved by gardeners and traditional handmade planes that produce paper-thin pieces of wood for woodworking hobbyists and cabinetry craftspeople.
Most of Hida’s business is done at the front counter, but they also sell online and do wholesale business around the Bay Area (including to The Gardener and Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, founded in 1922).
Hida’s heritage stretches to the late ’70s, when Makoto Imai, a Japanese carpenter, came to the United States and found the tools he’d brought from home were extremely popular among fellow woodworkers. His brother-in-law, Osamu Hiroyama, began importing the tools and selling them from the back of his pickup truck before opening a store in San Rafael in 1982 with co-founder Kip Mesirow.
Soon after, they moved the shop to Berkeley, and in 2001, Ko Minamizaki’s father, Max, who was semi-retired, took over the business. Minamizaki, then in high school, would occasionally help out, but wasn’t persuaded to join the family business until 2011. Having worked in restaurants, he quickly saw the value of knife sharpening skills and subsequently became an accomplished sharpener, with training in Japan. He now teaches classes offered by Hida and in collaboration with local woodworking groups.
Eventually, he became the manager. “That ultimately happens when you work for your parents,” he said, smiling.
Minamizaki plans to eventually take over the business, which has seven employees. He proudly notes that Hida is doing well despite never having purchased advertising.
“It’s all word of mouth,” he said. “Usually people come in and say ‘a neighbor or gardener told me you have the good stuff’.”
Berkeley Legacy Business Program
The Gardener and Hida Tools are among the roughly 230 companies being recognized by the City of Berkeley as part of its new Legacy Business Program, celebrating businesses that have operated in Berkeley for at least 25 years.
On Sept. 22, Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii launched the new program with a reception at the Hillside Club, itself a legacy business, founded in 1898. More than 100 people attended the celebration, bringing together generations of Berkeley’s business community. Among the businesses recognized, 18 have operated in Berkeley for more than a century.
The program was developed through a combined effort between the city’s Office of Economic Development, the Berkeley Chamber and Mayor Ishii’s office. Legacy businesses receive an official window decal created by local type designer Graham Bradley of A+ Type, a certificate signed by the mayor, and inclusion on DiscoveredinBerkeley.com’s legacy business map.
WHAT NEXT
- Check out Berkeley’s Legacy Business Map. Email the Office of Economic Development if a business is missing from the list.
- Patronize these longstanding members of our community, or find their events for the community, and others on the Visit Berkeley Event Calendar.
- Visit the Discovered in Berkeley Stories page to find more inspiration from beloved local businesses.
