Meet the Nashville Grower Behind Bloom & Bounty
She turned a backyard passion into one of Nashville’s most charming floral studios! Meet Meredith Bishop of Bloom & Bounty, where heirloom flowers, thoughtful design, and a deep love of nature come together. Image: Brooke Rainey
For Memphis-raised, Nashville-based grower and designer Meredith Bishop, flowers aren’t just pretty — they’re part of a lifelong connection to nature. What began as a backyard passion has evolved into Bloom & Bounty, a one-of-a-kind urban garden and floral studio. We caught up with Meredith to talk heirloom blooms, hands-in-the-dirt wisdom, and why growing flowers might just be one of the most meaningful things you can do.
What sparked your connection to flowers and gardening?
I’ve felt a strong connection to nature since childhood. Like many Southerners, I have vivid memories of running through my grandfather’s bountiful Mississippi garden, stopping to smell the sweet peas or admire the gladioli. I fantasized about getting married under his lush Muscat grape orchard.
As an adult, working a small cutting garden to surround myself with flowers has been a habit since my first college rental home — if I had access to a patch of ground, it wouldn’t remain barren for long … the magic and emotion found in flowers have rarely been duplicated in any other area of my life.
What inspired you to turn that lifelong love into Bloom & Bounty?
I married a talented landscape designer in my late 20s, and he opened the world of plant knowledge and design to me. We built a landscape and design business professionally, while personally sharing a passion for growing food for our young family.
In 2016, we moved into our larger plot on Woodmont Boulevard, which, in terms of growing space, presented me with so much opportunity beyond a simple kitchen garden.
For those who aren’t familiar, can you give us an overview of what Bloom & Bounty offers?
Bloom & Bounty is a sustainable, petite, and truly urban flower garden and floral design studio located in central Nashville on my one-acre plot along Woodmont Boulevard. This is my eighth year in business, and I specialize in growing heirloom and unconventional cut-flower varieties from seed in our urban gardens.
During the growing season, I use this bounty to design blousy, garden-led, romantic arrangements for retail — such as daily deliveries, intimate weddings, and corporate events. In the off-season, I try very hard to maintain that same “aesthetic of seasonality,” even if I’m not able to use local flowers.
In addition to design, I offer educational workshops on gardening and design, speaking engagements for fellow gardening enthusiasts, and a small online boutique of small-batch or antique home and garden items that I think beautify the everyday.
You’ve said your grandfather’s garden left a lasting impression. What’s one memory that still influences how you approach flowers today?
He was much more of a vegetable gardener than a flower gardener, but he always had his sweet peas and gladiolas sprinkled through the yard. I grow both in honor of those early memories. From a gardening perspective, though, my lasting impression is probably that his was a working garden, not a showpiece. I approach my own gardens in much the same way.
I gave up on meticulous weeding years ago, and look at every inch of available soil as a potential spot for growing something — whether annual, perennial, or bulb.
There’s very little wasted space, which means it’s often a jumbled cacophony of flowers in different stages of growth or decay, versus a magazine spread. But I’ll take it if it means more flowers.
For someone interested in starting their own cutting garden, what would you tell them before they plant their first seed?
Follow the sun, literally. Take a day and notate where the sun hits certain areas of your yard from sunrise to sunset. Plan your cutting garden in the spot that receives the most direct, full-day sun.
If you could plant one thing in every Nashville yard this spring, what would it be?
A peony tuber, hands down. For one, perennials such as peonies offer so much to the gardener for the long haul, and I find myself investing more and more in them, and away from the short-lived but tireless work of an annual.
Secondly, there’s really nothing like the beauty of an early spring peony blossom to invoke joy. But mostly because they can outlive humans (easily over 100 years in the right spot), and offer a tangible through-line to generations past and future. There’s something important and even sacred about that to me.
What’s something about you that people might find surprising?
I’m obsessed with the Middle Ages.
When you’re not in the garden, what does your ideal spring day in Nashville look like?
As they say, it’s hard to swing and miss in the spring, so I could be happy plopped down just about anywhere on a warm spring day in Nashville. If I had to plan it, though, it would include a drive down South Berrys Chapel Road (for the bucolic views), lunch in a French bakery, a dip into the Frist for some inspiration, and a walk through the gardens of Cheekwood, with my children at my side.
What’s one small ritual or habit that helps you stay connected to nature?
I’m a believer in the Latin phrase ‘solvitur ambulando’ (‘it is solved by walking’) and try to walk as far and often as I possibly can, preferably alone, with no podcast and on a trail, so that my senses are fully engaged and attending to the present moment, and my mind is free to do the work it needs to do.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
As an avid reader, one that has really led me on an interesting journey (both in expanding my gardening knowledge and simply deepening the life of the mind) is to “follow the footnote trail.” At the end of the day, this is really nothing more than an exhortation to “be curious.”
But I’ve developed a habit of reading something that resonates or piques my interest, and asking myself, “What were their sources?” and going to the footnotes to find more material, reading that next, and so on and so forth down the line. It’s how I learned almost everything I know about gardening, for instance.
This habit can become a never-ending quest, but in a wonderfully enriching way. A tenacious curiosity, which honestly only emerged as an adult and has intensified with age, has broadened my life in ways I could have never imagined.
LIGHTNING ROUND!
Go-to self-care item or treatment? An hour-long reflexology massage from Bucca
Favorite hidden gem in Nashville? Scarritt Bennett Chapel and grounds are a true jewel in our city and a source of inspiration for me every time I’m there. It’s a free, fast way to dip over to the old-world allure of Cambridge (in my mind, at least!)
Favorite book or podcast for gardening enthusiasts? I have two. One is a local recommendation, Nashville’s own Scott Shepherd with The Flower Podcast. He does a beautiful job straddling the line between flower gardening and floristry.
The other is Let’s Grow Girls, a flower-farming podcast by two British gardeners delivering that singular, dry English humor combined with their lovely, soothing accents.
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Jenna von Oy Bratcher
Jenna von Oy Bratcher is StyleBlueprint's Associate Editor and Lead Nashville Writer. The East Coast native moved to Nashville almost two decades years ago, by way of Los Angeles. She is a lover of dogs, strong coffee, traveling, and exploring the local restaurant scene bite by bite.