Our customers are saying
"Nurtio sensors are highly beneficial for us on the maintenance side, but they are also an insurance policy for our clients"
Rebecca Bakke, Bloom&Flourish
Rebecca, founder of Bloom & Flourish, discusses their innovative plant designs, strategies for maintaining quality amidst rapid growth, and the value of embracing technology like Nurtio, while advising colleagues to ride the biophilia wave and embrace innovation in the post-COVID era.
Bloom & Flourish is renowned as one of the fastest-growing and most innovative plantscaping companies in the United States, largely due to your creative plant designs characterized by a modern aesthetic. Could you please share more about your company's activities?
At Bloom & Flourish, we are passionate about plants and the way they beautify our spaces and improve our lives! We strive to create impactful, design-forward environments that connect people to the beauty of the natural world.
Considering your company's rapid growth, what is your vision for its future trajectory, and what strategies do you plan to employ to facilitate its continued expansion and scalability?
Our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity is to maintain quality as we grow.
We are using a multi-pronged approach to address this challenge.
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Education: By focusing on education for all our employees, we are actively growing bench strength and giving our employees a track for advancement.
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Hiring: We have been hiring ahead of our needs for plant maintenance. This allows us to have employees who are fully trained and immersed in our culture - ready to take on new clients. We are also focusing on developing a strong leadership team in preparation for the opportunities of the future.
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Fundamentals: Working with the National Interiorscape Network has helped us to focus on our fundamentals; our financials, our core values and honing our mission to really set the foundation for the coming years. We try to make all decisions with future growth in mind. Of course, growth is not a given, but we want to be prepared!
Photo by Kyla Chambers, living wall system by GSky
How big is your team, and what does it take to “Bloom” and “Flourish” in your company?
We currently have 15 awesome team members – and we are growing rapidly. We seek out people with a passion for plants and for life! In interviews, of course, we are interested in prospective employee’s plant experience, but we are also interested in their other passions. We have a stand-up comedian, a pet product developer, artists, a potter, and athletes. How cool!
We put a lot of emphasis and time into employing the right people for our culture. Our mantra at Bloom & Flourish is ELEVATE! We strive to elevate our designs, our service, and our plants to make them exceptional. That is a concept that we need everyone to be invested in.
You seem to be doing a lot of signature projects. What was the biggest and the most memorable one?
We have completed many large, memorable projects. However, it is not always the biggest projects that are the most inspiring. It is the unique projects that I remember the most. Bloom & Flourish is all about offering our clients new and different biophilic solutions!
One project that comes to mind is Newmont Mining. The in-house designer at Newmont was open to our innovative design ideas. We installed an under-stair three-dimensional moss Zen Garden. Newmont employees can interact with nature by meditatively raking the stones. This project incorporated many unusual design elements: plants in furniture, including a succulent table and plant shelves, and a large topographic moss map that is an artistic interpretation of one of Newmont’s gold mines.
We love it when our clients embrace biophilia and trust us to do something different!
Living wall system by GSky
While catering to both corporate clients and high-end residential accounts, it appears that you encounter various challenges in your day-to-day operations. Could you elaborate on the primary challenges you face, operational or otherwise?
Attracting and employing experienced employees is certainly one of our biggest challenges. We put a lot of effort into training new technicians, but with our rate of growth and many high-end clients, it is always nice to hire someone with experience.
Given your scientific background and keen interest in data, what were your initial thoughts when you first came across Nurtio?
I am always searching for technological solutions to improve our operational efficiency. The Nurtio sensors intrigued me when I heard about them, and we jumped at the chance to beta-test them on one of our living walls. When the testing was complete, we were so impressed that we purchased Nurtio sensors for all of our larger living walls.
Now that you have been using it for over a year, what would you say is the main value of Nurtio?
Nurtio sensors are highly beneficial for us on the maintenance side, but they are also an insurance policy for our clients, making it easy to sell our customers on the idea. If the water is inadvertently turned off at a living wall and the plants are damaged, our replacement warranty is void. So, it is in the client’s best interest to have something in place that allows us to see when the moisture level is low. Our clients also love to hear that we are embracing technology in our approach to plant care. It helps differentiate us from our competition.
From a maintenance perspective, the sensors and the Nurtio application allow me to keep an eye on our walls without having to be physically onsite. This helps us manage maintenance and is especially helpful with inexperienced technicians. I can tell if the wall is becoming progressively more wet or too dry. We had a situation at an airport living wall where the client had a leak in their kitchen. The contractor who came out to fix the leak turned off the water to the living wall but did not turn it back on. I received an email notification that the wall was too dry, and I could see that it hadn’t watered when it was supposed to. We were able to visit the site and rectify the problem. A good result for both us and the client!
We also use Nurtio sensors in conjunction with the Hunter Hydrawise application on a couple of our living walls. Hydrawise is a Wi-Fi plug-in to the Hunter irrigation system that allows remote adjustment of the irrigation controller and remote watering. I will perform a remote review of the wall with our technicians, looking at graphical Nurtio sensor data of hydration, light and temperature. We talk about the trends we are seeing, but also what the technician is physically seeing and feeling on the wall. We can then make the necessary adjustments to the watering cycle, building the technician’s confidence and giving me oversight into the process.
Photo by Rocky Mountain Photography, living wall system by GSky
You have also been introduced to our latest product, Nurtio Insight, which is designed to help with the operational aspects of your plantscaping business. What do you think about this concept?
I love the concept. I can’t wait to try it out.
(note from authors: since April 2024, Nurtio Insight has become a standalone company One Big Green)
What are your thoughts on the plantscaping industry in the post-COVID era? Have you noticed any emerging trends in the field?
We are a young company, incorporated in 2018. We were around pre-COVID, but much of our growth was during and after that period.
The interest in biophilic design from our A&D partners is huge and continuing to grow. Our clients want a one-stop biophilia shop – and that’s what we strive to be! We make sure that we are seen as the experts by being educated in all things green and investing in innovative solutions.
If there is anything you would like to wish or advise your colleagues across the globe, what would that be?
Ride the biophilia wave! What a great time to be in our amazing industry!
Thank you, Rebecca! Working with your organization is always inspiring, and we value continuous collaboration and look forward to what the future brings.