Henrico Small Business Spotlight: Bloomistry

Conner Parrish wants to make healthier gardens and sustainable living more attainable. Created out of a love for the planet and a desire to reconnect with nature, Bloomistry is his vehicle to make it happen.

Before there was Bloomistry, there was Blossoming Roots Farm & Supply. Parrish’s first venture began in 2022 and focused on sustainable flower farming. But even prior to that business, the Henrico native was keeping bees as a way to cope with loss. Parrish's father died of a heart attack while he was in college, and that tragedy pushed him towards entrepreneurship. 

“That allowed me to really realize life’s way too short to do stuff you don’t like,” Parrish said. “And that’s kinda how I got my start in this whole genre.”

Beekeeping led to flower farming, which led to flower selling, which led to a desire to educate others about living an eco-aligned, nature-based lifestyle.

Today, Bloomistry is on a mission to “give people the ability to be able to live and create a healthier lifestyle through their garden, through their landscape, through their home.” For Parrish, that means shifting peoples’ focus to the soil beneath their feet.

“If you have healthy soil, you have healthy plants, you have healthy people,” Parrish said. “Soil is a living thing. . . And the problem right now is modern agriculture, toxic sprays. . . Those chemicals have basically killed our soil and made it not alive anymore. And so by doing that over this long-term period, we have basically – I would say – pickled our soils with salts.”

To solve that problem, Parrish is trying to help people put the “life” back into their soil. One way the regenerative gardening company does that is through organic garden and homestead consulting. In other words, Parrish gives residential and commercial clients the tools they need to create or sustain an organic garden or homestead. And that typically starts with a personalized consultation with the client.

“We come out, we have a chat for about an hour, we take a soil sample, we see where you're at,” Parrish explained. "And I like to say, you have an hour of my time or my staff's time, to pick our brains about anything you have in your yard or your garden or your farm.”

The goal with any organic garden or homestead service is to create a flourishing ecosystem that restores the environment, fosters biodiversity and enhances nutrient density in crops. And if your soil needs help, Parrish can install his made-in-house soil full of all the amendments plants need to become “the healthiest things you’ve ever seen.”

If you’re looking to transform your outdoor space in a more specific way, Bloomisty is happy to take on the task. Parrish got a recent call, for example, from a woman who wants a garden bed. But she needs it to be a certain height because she has an autoimmune disease called Multiple Sclerosis. For Bloomistry, that’s not a problem.

“We can come in and put in a raised bed that will make it turnkey for her to be able to get into it,” Parrish said.

These garden and homestead consultations can also go beyond crafting a perfectly personalized garden. Do you want to create habitat to help native pollinators thrive? Bloomistry can do it. Need help with organic pest management? Bloomistry is glad to step in. Curious about getting into beekeeping? Bloomistry has all the answers you need.

And if you’d rather learn from Bloomistry in a classroom setting, check out its eco-friendly education courses. Parrish’s classes cover everything from soil health, to beneficial insects, to regenerative farming, to living an eco-aligned life. So far, he’s taught at local schools, retirement communities and adult learning centers, among other places. You can connect with Bloomistry to learn more about booking an indoor or outdoor class.

There’s also an art therapy side to Bloomistry. Parrish offers botanical art workshops to help people turn organic materials into creative works of art. Pressed flower art, dried wreath making and botanical jewelry are some of Parrish’s specialties.

“We'll be offering that in partnership with bigger entities in our own space coming soon to bring those classes en masse to the public as well,” Parrish said.

Bloomistry’s upcoming community-focused projects – one of which is still under wraps – will focus on making Bloomistry’s educational efforts more accessible to people regardless of their financial circumstances.

“Life's expensive right now,” Parrish said. “Everyone knows that, and you might not have that extra 50 bucks to go take a workshop. So, there are programs we're developing with other bigger partnerships that will allow those classes to be maybe reduced in price.”

Parrish also wants Bloomistry to build habitats in Central Virginia – for bats, pollinators, dragonflies, and other creatures.

“That second leg is restoring and creating new spaces for habitat, for the life around us,” Parrish said. “And then having an education component built into that too, for the community to be able to go check out.”

The company also donates some of its profits to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden – where he’s currently teaching a class – and The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation – an international nonprofit that strives to protect the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats.

Bloomistry, Parrish made clear, is fueled by passion. He has so much love for what he does that he’s happy to work “eight days a week” to help his company grow.

“It's totally worth it,” Parrish said. “I'm pushing an agenda that I think people need to know about, so that kind of keeps me running.”

Parrish hopes Bloomistry can inspire people to make a positive impact on the planet. Not only because the natural world sustains us, but also because he’s seen the power of a connection with nature.

“That's my core reason I think I'm on this earth. . . to allow people to understand that, yeah, life is very tough and everybody goes through everything and it's life, but we have to take care of nature and what we have and reconnect with it.

“It’s what helped me not go down the wrong path. I want to start a home base here in Virginia, where I have my roots in Henrico County. Then my next goals. . . are getting products and things that help people garden better and more appropriately with nature out to the masses.”

If you’d like to learn more about Parrish and his labor of love, visit bloomistry.com or follow the company on Instagram and Facebook. And keep an eye out for updates about organic gardening product launches, a potential local brick and mortar location and online educational classes.

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