My penchant for flowers has followed me throughout my life. As a young college undergrad in a rented bungalow in Athens, Georgia, I remember planting perennials throughout the yard so that I would always have something beautiful to cut and bring indoors. My love for gardening in all its forms has satisfied my desire to be surrounded by beauty & garden bounty while serving as a form of therapy and creative expression.

Like many, I find winter to be mentally and emotionally grueling- the darkness, the dormancy, the barrenness, the cold. At the suggestion of a friend in 2016, I began to play with seed-starting indoors under fluorescent lights during the trying winter months. It wasn’t long until this new practice completely hooked me. I was experimenting with heirloom seeds that I remembered as a child in my grandparents’ southern garden but that I had not seen (or, more importantly, smelled) since the early 1980s. Sprouting new life during those gray winter days seemed to bring me to life, too, and what began as a way to cope with winter turned into something that now fills me with joy year-round.

Heirloom flowers soon filled my urban gardens. It wasn’t long until I was swimming in old-fashioned blooms, such as bachelor buttons, pincushion, snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias, sweetpeas, roses & dahlias. Friends began to comment that the blooms from my cut flower garden were varieties they hadn’t seen in typical florists’ arrangements or grocery store fare. Before long, my passion became a small hobby business, fulfilling orders for local floral delivery subscriptions and small events such as birthdays and dinner parties. I enjoy all aspects of the farmer-florist business, from seed catalogs to nursing seedlings along to first crop flush to early mornings spent harvesting to arranging and placing in a client’s hands. My arrangements are etheral and natural – never formal or fussy. I try not to get in the way of letting the flowers speak for themselves and often find that what grows together goes together.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a smooth road?
Like most ventures, it’s had its hurdles. I consider myself an urban cut-flower farmer- a “micro” farmer is probably the most accurate term, meaning I grow all my flowers on the 1-acre plot of residential land along Woodmont Boulevard in central Nashville. While growing my flowers from my home has eliminated many of the headaches that farming a plot of land I don’t live on might present, it has unique challenges.

I classically homeschool my three children, ages 12, 8 & 6. Their education is my priority, but if I’m not careful, I often find that the gardens have a siren’s call on me, pulling me outdoors to either escape & enjoy the beauty or taunt me with all the work and weeding that needs to be done.

Two, as my business and volume of flowers have grown, I have desired to sell my excess blooms directly to local florists, most of whom are unfamiliar with “real” flowers. I use that term not to disparage florists but to point out that flowers that have been genetically modified to eliminate fragrance (it’s a waste of energy when there aren’t any bees to pollinate them), reach unnatural stem lengths over 24 inches (high dollar floral orders call for large vessels), and grown specifically to withstand weeks of transatlantic transport in a cooler (with more cooler time required once onsite at the florist) are simply shades of the real thing. Local florists are often unsure how to proceed with a product exhibiting signs of life- such as bending toward the sun, perfuming the room, or supplying a ten-day vase life.  Florists have honed their craft on what has, for decades, largely been their only option-good little uniform soldiers that have been flown in from Holland or South America or elsewhere to live in the florists’ coolers for a bit longer. However, in 2022, it would seem that we know too much about the costs to both the consumer and the environment to levy such a tax on both for the sheer luxury of flown-in-flowers when there are beautiful natural options right under our noses. I aim to educate florists about the advantages of local flowers, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this has been a major struggle. Old habits die hard, as they say.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Bloom & Bounty?
I specialize in heirloom cut flowers and produce ethereal arrangements based on nature’s bounty. Flowers have natural bloom cycles- in nature, you don’t find sweetpeas in the fall, and you don’t find zinnias in the spring. Therefore, my arrangements are always changing according to what the garden is offering at the moment. I don’t use a cooler, meaning everything is harvested fresh the morning of arrangement, giving it the longest vase life possible. My specialty is small-scale events- intimate dinner parties, birthdays, celebrations, & European market-wrapped bouquets, which make great gifts.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Regarding gardening, my Mississippi grandparents had a muscadine grape orchard, complete with copious, heavy-laden clusters dangling overhead (at least according to my childhood memory). I used to play under the grape arbor, smelling the pungent (& very particular) scent of bursting muscadine grapes and dreaming of getting married underneath.