These days you need money, not smarts, to hang up your shingle in Yaletown or on Main Street, but the tenderloin? Susan Schroeder explains why she and partner Derek McCluskey chose to be pioneers when they opened their store, Wanted–Lost Found Canadian, (436 Columbia Street, open 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily) last November in what may well be the city's next hot area. The low rent appealed, for a start; she also loved the historic buildings: "I like the area, it's vibrant. We're halfway between Gastown and Chinatown." And then there was the space, a barbershop since 1963, which, once they lifted the linoleum and plywood, revealed wood floors with planks four centimetres thick. Polished to gleaming and with retro furniture used for display, the shop may be in one of the city's grittier areas but it feels like a country store somewhere like Denman Island, especially with Dara, a boxer-Lab, and Fid, a black cat with lime-green eyes, wandering around. In the planning for three years by Schroeder, who holds a BFA and formerly worked in a garden store, Wanted is crammed with plants as well as finds for the home that are "locally made, organic, sustainable, and as much recycled as possible".

It took the non-car-owning Schroe­der and McCluskey three months to locate a rental vehicle large enough to transport the fiddlehead fig tree that dominates the room and almost nudges the ceiling. The plants are intended mostly for indoor gardeners, she says: "The area needed it." Ranging from tiny cacti to coffee plants, they're flying out the door, mostly in the hands of local residents. Ladies from the Chinese seniors' home upstairs communicate with smiles. "On cheque day, we get a lot of people coming in to buy plants who have SROs [rooms in single-room-occupancy buildings]," says Schroeder. "For two dollars, you've got something alive in your room." Display fixtures are back-alley and yard-sale finds. A caladium plant stands in an ancient typewriter case. Painted with blackboard paint, a coffee-table top carries chalked descriptions of tiny plants corralled on battered silver trays. In the window, a shabby-chic armchair stands on a glass door that rests on trestles.

"Everything I use is recycled," says Schroeder. In the recent Swell exhibition of environmentally sound ideas, she showed cushions cut from vintage camel-coloured wool blankets and appliquéd with circles scissored from a favourite old green sweater. Colours and styling were modern but the overall effect cozy. Schroeder has quilted another blanket, striped in blue, pink, and cream, into similar cushions, punching its pale Edwardian shades with deep-crimson disks ($45 to $75). The cushions are stuffed with cotton insulation from GreenWorks Building Supply (386 West 8th Avenue). "I love the quality of the vintage wool," she says of the collection of Canadian wool blankets that is her raw material. Left-overs are cut into whimsical stuffed toys ($12 to $20)–owls, dogs, and her take on the traditional Asian lucky cat with upraised paw. Nothing is wasted. Smaller pieces become bead-embellished and flower-embroidered bracelets ($24.99). Diminutive patched bags ("people use them as little wallets") have a homespun, early-settler look to them thanks to the nostalgia-inducing fabrics and blanket-stitched details ($18). Off soon to an exhibit in Seattle, and also made from wool-blankets odds and ends, are mini quilts ($10 and up) pegged to a length of banged-up wire fencing attached to the wall. Bargains, agreed, but Schroeder is comfortable with her prices: "I judge what I charge by how much time it's taken me." Swaths of linen in shades of brown and green, off-cuts from Maiwa Handprints, are seamed into patchwork cushions ($45) loosely based on the log-cabin pattern, with leftover fabric used to make mice filled with organic catnip ($3.99). Random pieces of baseboard from when they redid the store have been painted aqua, given a crackle finish, and decoupaged with tropical fish ($14.99).

"When we ripped up the floor, there were newspapers from 1962, which I made into [greeting] cards. I couldn't throw them away," says Schroeder. Last weekend she was collecting beach glass. She goes down to Crab Park and picks up driftwood. "It's a great way to live, to sit here and make things," says Schroeder. "I have never been so happy."

She admits to a weakness for the "slightly battered and abused", and while she's referring to a couple of elderly push lawnmowers in one corner when she says. "It's astounding what people don't see value in. Then they see it in a new context," she could be referring to Wanted's location. "It's too beautiful down here, the buildings," she says. "I think this street will happen." It's handy, too. The False Creek and Main Street buses stop right in front. As McCluskey adds, in this part of town there are few places with open doors. And definitely no others with lavender bushes flanking the entrance.