Ironweed Flowers and Gifts is about surrounding yourself with flowers, plants and nature.
The floral and gift shop, at 188 S. Jefferson St., opened last April. The building was previously home to the Village Florist.
“Everything in here, I try to get flower-related. I love flowers and plants. I wanted it to be something different in Nashville. That’s what we’re trying for, something that maybe other shops don’t have. It’s a mixture of old and new,” owner Debbie Herring said.
Herring and her family also own the Brown County Inn. She and her husband, Barry, moved to the county six years ago, but they have owned land for 22 years and built a cabin there. The family would come down on the weekends and for holidays before they moved here full time.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Along with owning the flower shop, Herring still manages the Brown County Inn’s front desk and housekeeping staff. “We have a really good crew right now (at the inn). That helps a lot,” she said.
When Herring was living in Indianapolis, she had a home store there. “I thought about doing a store here. When the inn got kind of settled, I looked around and thought about renting a place. Then this place came up for sale. The rest is history,” she said.
Herring did not have experience running a flower shop. She said the only reason it remained a flower shop was because Village Florist employees Jamie Rumple and Judy Games said they would stay on to help her.
Games began floral designing back in the late 1970s. Rumple has been working in the industry for 18 years.
“I like to put a smile on someone else’s face. It always makes you feel good when someone receives your flowers or your arrangement and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love them,’” Rumple said.
“For me it’s a big difference, because for 30 years, I was in education, so I really enjoy making people happy,” Games added.
The shop is off the beaten path on Jefferson Street, so Herring said they utilize Facebook and Instagram to help draw folks in. But they also have developed relationships with a lot of local customers, too.
“We like to take care of our local people. We deliver outside of the Nashville area. But when we have a local person, we make sure they are treated right,” Herring said. “We get senior citizens that want to have a little brightness in their home, but don’t have a lot of money, so we do what we can to accommodate them.”
“We have one customer who comes in and buys flowers, like a single rose in a tissue wrap, to take to somebody else. They just do it randomly to brighten their life, so it’s really sweet,” Games added.
Herring is surrounded by flowers at home. She has a 10-acre field full of wildflowers.
“Ever since we’ve had this property for the last 20 years, every time I come down here I gather armloads of flowers to take home or bring inside. They (Games and Rumple) tease me because every time I make an arrangement, it looks a little wild. I dabble in it (arranging),” she said.
In addition to being a full-service florist, the shop sells house plants. They make bouquets, and they provide arrangements for weddings and funerals, too.
“We’re getting ready to put a funeral arrangement together. That’s not one of the happier occasions, but we like to think that it brings comfort to people,” Games said.
They also do boutonnieres and corsages for prom. A high school boy could make it a one-stop shop because they rent tuxes, too.
“We get high school boys with their first girlfriends who don’t have a lot of money, so we make them look like rock stars by pointing out what flowers will look a lot bigger,” Games said.
House plants and flowers are the shop’s top sellers, though. Herring handpicks all of the house plants. She has traveled to Michigan, Ohio and even as far as New York to floral shows.
“We don’t order them online; we go pick them out ourselves. We probably go at least once a month and get plants,” she said. “We work really, really hard to bring something different. People, once they know we’re here, have them come in and we can give them a little bit of spring right now. … Plants cheer people up.”
The shop is also selling Valentine’s Day cards, postcards, antiques, pop-up cards and soap that comes from France.
In the spring, the plan is to have bedding plants for yards, including perennials and annuals. Those are also handpicked.
“We just try to stand out above the crowd. We try to have things that are affordable for everyone, not just higher-end things. We don’t like to have everything that everyone else has,” Rumple said.
“You deserve the flowers. People deserve flowers,” Herring continued.
“They deserve to come in and get something to just brighten their day or somebody else’s.”
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Location: 188 S. Jefferson St. (in former Village Florist building)
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays
Online: ironweedgifts.com; @Ironweedgifts on Instagram and Facebook.
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