Connor Parrish, founder of Bloomistry
“You’d probably have to eat about eight oranges today to get the same amount of vitamins your grandparents did years ago [from] just one,” Bloomistry founder Conner Parrish says. Even for orange juice devotees, this makes for an intimidating citrus intake. Parrish, an Ashland resident and lover of flowers, has spent his past five years as a Richmonder tracking down the culprit of this supermarket produce problem: nutrient-depleted soil.
Parrish, a Henrico native, was just 18 years old and a student at the VCU School of Business when he lost his father to a sudden heart attack. Shaken by the unexpected loss, he turned to his nature-loving roots and found therapy in beekeeping.
In the spirit of Laura Numeroff’s famed children’s book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”, his flourishing beehives soon required the planting of a wildflower plot. What began as a healing hobby snowballed into a full-blown cut-flower business with the 2022 establishment of Blossoming Roots Farm and Supply. Much like his company’s name, Parrish blossomed in the floriculture trade, selling flowers to local florists, leading foliage arrangement workshops at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, and giving landscaping lectures to senior living communities and gardening clubs.
This June, Parrish debuted Bloomistry, a revamped version of his flower farm. Along with the new name came a larger sense of purpose. Parrish's focus has shifted to community outreach projects, backyard landscape installations and multiweek private gardening consultations. His goal is to help people grow their own food, restore their soil and reconnect with nature.
“I thought, ‘Let’s go big and grow this, let’s get this message of protecting the earth to the masses,’” he says. “With the flower farm, I didn’t have the ability to actually give people the gardens I was preaching about in the classes.”
“Healthy soil creates healthy plants, which create healthy people,” Parrish says, and these words drive Bloomistry’s core mission. Residential garden installations are his main method of providing River City neighborhoods with year-round access to vitamin-packed fruits and vegetables.
Every garden is mapped out according to clients’ unique preferences. The turnkey process begins with an initial evaluation and soil sampling. “Our in-house designers build each garden up to the client’s wishes,” Parrish says. “We can do raised or in-ground, scale or backyard[-sized gardens], and anything in between. I’ve had clients buy 5-acre farms for a garden before. The goal is to get people up and running with chemical-free gardens as soon as possible.”
Parrish believes healthy soil leads to happy gardens.
Parrish believes ethically made, nutrient-rich soil is nature’s true medicine. “The main ingredient is healthy soil. A garden without healthy soil does not make healthy produce,” he says. “Better soil means less pests, produce that’s more weather tolerant and better food coming out of the garden.”
A seasoned Sunday morning farmers marketgoer, Parrish is pro local. Each installed garden is laid with a base of organic, housemade soil blends — all sourced, collected, combined and packaged in Richmond. In the coming year, Bloomistry plans to bring current clients’ most loved blends to a broader audience with the nationwide launch of a gardening product line. “Our mission is to keep everything locally produced. We are committed to making that happen,” Parrish adds.
On top of toxin-free plant bed planning, Bloomistry currently offers a wide range of environmental educational services. Whether you’re a longtime green thumb or a wildflower wilter, there is a class for everyone. Parrish regularly leads college-level courses through the University of Richmond’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute; lessons on sustainable beekeeping, tropical fruit tasting and coral reef protection at community venues such as The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen; public park clean-up events; and soil restoration sessions with about 50 local garden clubs.
Parrish is an artist at heart, and many of his most popular workshops meld crafts and nature — pressed-flower greeting cards, dried wreaths, botanical jewelry and preserved wedding flowers are just a handful of the projects on offer (he provides all of the organic materials required for each class).
Parrish also has been busy forging business partnerships, planting the seeds to develop a dedicated Bloomistry community space downtown. “[Bloomistry] is an evolution of everything I’ve gone through in the past,” he says. “I feel it’s my purpose to help people get back to their roots of growing organically, and to give people everywhere access to do so from their own backyards. I wake up every day so happy to be a changer in this area.”
