Nashville / Interior Plant Design in The Gulch, Nashville
The Gulch was a rail yard, then a parking lot, then this
Interior and exterior plant design for offices, restaurants and residential lobbies in The Gulch — a neighborhood where almost every building is newer than the plants in it.
Our work here
Ladybird Taco, The Gulch — full design, installation and maintenance, interior and exterior. We do the same at their Inglewood and 12South locations.
What this neighborhood is
The Gulch earned LEED for Neighborhood Development certification in 2009, the first neighborhood in the American South to do so. The Gulch Business Improvement District was created in 2006. Before that, most of it was surface parking.
The current stock
Gulch Union is a three-phase, 1.15 million square foot development. Phase I at 1222 Demonbreun completed in 2020: twenty stories, 330,090 square feet of Class AA office and 5,836 square feet of retail. Phase II, The Pullman, is twenty-eight stories and 306 residences. Phase III is designed at thirty-two stories and 450,000 square feet.
Everything here is glass, and that is the whole problem
A neighborhood built entirely in the last two decades is a neighborhood built to current energy code. That means high-performance glazing across the board, and high-performance glazing is specified to reject solar heat gain. It does. What it also rejects is a meaningful share of the light a plant was counting on.
The result is a district full of rooms that feel bright and read low on a meter. This is the single most common reason plants fail in The Gulch, and it is invisible until somebody measures. We measure at the placement — not at the window and not for the floor.
Restaurants here are the real planting story
The Gulch's ground floor is hospitality, and a restaurant plant faces four things an office plant never does: airborne grease that coats leaves within two weeks, dry heat near a line or oven, chair backs and bus tubs in every aisle, and staff kindness in the form of a glass of water tipped into a pot several times a shift.
At Ladybird Taco we specify for all four across three locations — cleanable leaf surfaces where grease is in play, vessels heavy enough to stay where they are put, placement out of the service path, and a standing instruction that nobody on staff waters anything, because we do it on route.
Residential lobbies and amenity decks
Icon, Velocity, Terrazzo, Twelve Twelve, The Pullman — the Gulch's residential towers all sell the same amenity list, and the lobby is the part every resident and every prospect walks through daily. Amenity-deck planting is exterior work on our thirteen-step program: the interior fifteen plus weed removal, deadheading, seasonal cutbacks, irrigation line checks and hose discipline. Exterior trash cleanup is not part of the service, and on a rooftop deck that is worth agreeing in writing before anyone assumes otherwise.
No special approvals to worry about
The Gulch sits inside the Downtown Code, the form-based code Metro adopted in 2010, rather than under a historic overlay. There is no preservation review to negotiate for interior planting here. Your constraints are your landlord's rules and your building's dock — which, in buildings this new, are usually well organized.
On-site consultation
We walk the space, read the light, and talk through how the room gets used before anything is specified.
Custom plant design
Plant and vessel selection matched to your brand, your light, and the way the space needs to feel.
Delivery and install
Our team pots, places, and cleans up, and leaves care notes for anything you handle yourself.
Ongoing maintenance
Watering, fertilizing, pruning, rotation, and pest treatment on a set schedule, including swapping out anything that stops thriving.
How a project runs
01
Consultation on site
We come look at the space, take light readings, and scope it.
02
Design proposal
Plant and vessel selections with placements and a quote.
03
Install day
Sourced, potted, delivered, placed. Usually one visit.
04
Care route
Recurring maintenance visits on your schedule.
Plant Savvy is the third vendor I have had at our hotel in three years, and Savannah and her team are the only vendor that truly saw our needs and put our ideas into action.
I never have to worry about under or over watering. They make sure everything stays healthy, dust the plants, and keep them looking beautiful and thriving year round.
Frequently asked questions
Do you already work in The Gulch?
Yes. Ladybird Taco's Gulch location is our design, installation and maintenance, inside and out.
Our office is all glass. Why would light be an issue?
Because modern glazing rejects a large share of the solar spectrum by design. Your eyes adapt to it; plants do not. It is the defining plant problem of this neighborhood.
Can you service a residential lobby and amenity deck together?
Yes — interior on the fifteen-step process, exterior on the thirteen-step one.
How often do you come?
Weekly or biweekly. For a restaurant, weekly is usually right.
What is the minimum?
$350 weekly maintenance, $3,000 project minimum, consultation $250 on site or $125 virtual.
Start your project
Tell us about the space and we'll set up a time to come see it.
Plant design, installation and care for The Gulch — offices, restaurants and lobbies in a neighborhood built entirely since 2006. Ladybird Taco is ours.