The last flower shop on Baseline Road tells a story of family resilience and a bygone era

Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this article misstated the year Nick Nakagawa died.

With a golf club, shopping plazas and apartment complexes, south Phoenix’s landscape has has evolved since the Nakagawa family established their business, Baseline Flowers, near 40th Street and Baseline Road around 70 years ago.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Baseline Road between 32nd and 48th streets was a springtime destination where visitors would drive along what was then a two-lane road and marvel at the flower fields in full bloom.

At the time, the Nakagawas were one of several Japanese American families farming in the area, and they found success growing and selling flowers to seasonal tourists.

Now, they’re the only flower shop that is still in operation from that era.

The last flower shop on Baseline Road

As metro Phoenix urbanized over the decades, nearby families stopped growing flowers and produce, and farmland was replaced with housing and commercial properties. But Hiroshi, known to most as Nick, and Tatsuko Nakagawa persevered by weathering changes in the floral industry and setbacks, such as a fire in the ‘90s that destroyed the original part of their building and their pagoda tower.

The latest challenge that the business endured was when two speeding cars crashed into the shop in May 2022. While no serious injuries were reported, the accident destroyed a newly painted mural and damaged parts of the structure as well as some of their inventory and a fridge. The repairs are still underway.

Kathy Nakagawa — an associate professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University — has co-owned the shop with her siblings since their father died in 2021 and has found inspiration in her parents’ resilience over the decades.

“When my parents called to say that there had been a fire … they were already in their 70s. So we thought, ‘Maybe you could retire; you could decide to close down,’ and they did not want to do that. So they kept it going,” Nakagawa told The Arizona Republic.

“I think about that a lot now, especially with this recent accident, because they lost everything (in the fire). I mean, (with) the smoke damage, everything had to be packed up. That had to be torn down and built back up, everything.”

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Baseline Flowers preserves the history of south Phoenix’s flower fields

Though an occasional customer would come in and reminisce about the time when Baseline was an agricultural area, many people living in metro Phoenix these days don’t know about the flower fields, Nakagawa said. That’s why she feels compelled to preserve “the historical significance of this area."

“It was a huge tourist attraction for Phoenix, and it was one of the places where Japanese Americans were able to build their own business after World War II — I think because of all of that, it feels very important to make sure that the business continues,” Nakagawa said.

“We love our customers, and we love being able to support people in sad times and in times of celebration. But I think the significance of the business is really the history that it brings to the community and how much you lose if it's not here.”

The Nakagawas’ history in the area dates back to the 1930s, after Nick Nakagawa and his family moved to the Valley. However, they were forced to abandon their home with little notice when the U.S. government wrongfully sent approximately 120,000 people, most of whom had Japanese ancestry, to relocation centers for several years after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Those who were incarcerated, like the Nakagawas, waited more than 40 years to receive a formal apology and reparations via the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Nick Nakagawa, who was a senior at Phoenix Union High School when Pearl Harbor was bombed, recounted to The Republic in 1982 that “we lost everything we had, so we had to start all over again.”

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Turning a barren land into something beautiful

As they rebuilt their lives after being interned at Poston War Relocation Center near Yuma — which closed in 1945 after Japan's surrender — the Nakagawas settled in the South Mountain area, where Nick Nakagawa took on the responsibility of acquiring land and getting the business running.

As Kathy Nakagawa wrote in The Arizona Republic in 2016, “Most Phoenix residents considered this rocky desert soil undesirable for farming, but the Nakagawas and other Japanese-American farm families were willing to undertake the back-breaking work of moving rocks, tilling and setting up irrigation systems to make the farms productive.”

Their work was preceded by the Huhugam (also known as Hohokam) people, who had mastered farming in the Valley by building canals centuries ago.

Nakagawa credited Mexican American and Yaqui families living in nearby Guadalupe for their “labor and support,” without which “the farms could not have survived.”

Baseline Flowers, like other nearby businesses, grew their own flowers. However, this eventually became less cost-effective than purchasing flowers wholesale. The industry changed further when they started competing with grocery stores, specialty florists and direct delivery services that started selling floral arrangements.

At its height, Baseline Flowers employed dozens of people to work on up to 100 acres of land, and Kathy Nakagawa and her siblings helped, too.

Now, they have two employees.

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Baseline Flowers is a story of resilience

Nick Nakagawa “kept coming into the shop every day” until shortly before he died in January 2021 at the age of 97, Kathy Nakagawa said.

“I think he was doing it as much because it was fun to see people when they'd stop in to see him, and he just said, ‘I don't want to sit around at home.’ So even though it wasn't doing great as a revenue-generating business, it did a lot for him in other kinds of ways,” Nakagawa said. “He was like, Well, what else am I going to do?”

His dedication to the family business lives on in Kathy Nakagawa’s drive to keep Baseline Flowers alive. She is now on sabbatical from ASU so she can run the store and help Maria Marquez, the floral designer who has worked there for more than 20 years, keep the business alive.

Loyal customers have also inspired Nakagawa to keep going.

“So many people checked in on us after the accident just to … say how sad they were, that they had watched the mural go up and they had watched the changes we were making for the business,” Nakagawa said. “And they helped; we stayed in business.”

Despite the damage to the store, Baseline Flowers didn’t miss a beat after the accident, continuing to take orders over the phone and in-person.

It hasn’t been easy being the last surviving business in the south Phoenix flower fields.

Growing up in the area, Kathy Nakagawa saw Baseline Road expand “from a two-lane to a four-lane (road) and then to six lanes.” She believes that the fact that Baseline is now a major thoroughfare is largely to blame for the cars crashing into the store.

“They've built the street … (with) nothing between 32nd and 40th Street, nothing to slow down traffic — there's no stoplights anywhere else along there — so people just speed. And there really are only two businesses along here on the south side of the road: There's Lin's (Grand) Buffet, and then there's us,” Nakagawa said. “Yeah, that's been hard. But our hope is we'll stay here.”

Baseline Flowers is located right off the sidewalk on Baseline Road, whereas most other lots located on the south side are set away from the busy street. In many cases, buildings are also behind a fence or wall barrier. (Baseline Flowers has a wall that is a few feet high in front of the glass storefront.)

If there were more businesses in this corridor, Nakagawa believes, the city would invest in upgrades that would make the road — where the speed limit is 45 miles per hour — safer.

“On this stretch where we are, 32nd to 40th Street, there's not much. And that's why I think the city doesn't see this as a road where they need to do anything to slow traffic down, because they really see it as a thoroughfare,” she said. “I think if they were considering this area as something where it was conducive to small businesses or other things, the road wouldn't have been designed the way it is.”

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Honoring the past while looking to the future

Kathy Nakagawa remains passionate about keeping the business alive.

“After my dad passed away, we decided we really wanted to make sure people remember the history of the place. So we've been digging out newspaper articles and photos and putting those up on the wall,” she said.

She had an old aerial photo of Baseline Road’s fields blown up to display at the front of the store. Many people are amazed to see only a two-way highway in the picture, she said. “I’m so impressed … because they didn’t have drones then, right?” Nakagawa added.

To Nakagawa, preserving history entails not only honoring the past but also planning for the future.

“A lot of people … (are) moving into the south Phoenix area, and they don't know very much about the history, and I think as they learn about that, they're always really happy to know, and they want more of that,” she said.

Over time, she would like to develop some of their land to build a restaurant as well as a coffee shop or a bookstore. She envisions a space where musicians and storytellers can perform. Perhaps even create a small garden where “people can see the kinds of flowers that used to grow here.”

“We really like the character of this area and would love to see (destinations) that bring even more people in,” Nakagawa said. “I think it gives people a sense of place.”

Details: 3801 E. Baseline Road, Phoenix. 602-437-1230, https://baselineflowers.com.

Reach Entertainment Reporter KiMi Robinson at kimi.robinson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @kimirobin and Instagram @ReporterKiMi.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Baseline Flowers preserves the history of south Phoenix flower fields