Fast Bio
David Bishop is the founder of Elevation Living Walls, creating plant-driven environments for hospitality, commercial, and luxury residential spaces.
Founder • Speaker • Biophilic Design Practitioner
David
Bishop
Designer of remarkable environments. Builder of living systems.
David Bishop is the founder of Elevation Living Walls, a Southern California design-build studio creating plant-driven environments for hospitality, commercial, and luxury residential spaces. His story spans international product development, garden design, reinvention, and a return to the power of plants to connect people with place.
About David Bishop
A creative career shaped by design, commerce, reinvention, and a return to the garden.
David Bishop is the founder of Elevation Living Walls, a Southern California design-build studio creating custom living walls, vertical gardens, and biophilic environments for hospitality, commercial, and luxury residential spaces.
Long before Elevation, David built a successful career in the home and garden trade through Planet Import, Inc. and the Habitudes brand. As a designer, importer, and product developer, he worked across factories, materials, retail programs, and wholesale distribution — developing pottery, fountains, garden décor, and lifestyle products for the home and garden marketplace.
Then came the cliff. After years of momentum in the import business, a major customer collapse forced a pivotal reinvention. What could have remained a setback instead became a redirection — a return to the garden, to drawing, to landscape composition, and to the deeper relationship between plants, people, and place.
In that season of rebuilding, David found that his artistic skillset — the ability to sketch, visualize, compose, and tell a spatial story — allowed him to be of service in a new way. Helping clients define their aesthetic led to larger garden environments, more meaningful design conversations, and eventually to the living wall category.
“Plants Grow People™. When thoughtfully designed and properly built, living environments change the way people feel, gather, work, and connect.”
Living walls became more than a product. They became a medium — a way to bring architecture, horticulture, hospitality, wellness, and emotional experience into one living system. Today, Elevation Living Walls reflects that journey: a company built not merely to install plants on walls, but to create plant-driven environments that perform as beautifully as they look.
Narrative Arc
From product development to plant-driven environments.
David’s story is not a straight line from business to business. It is a creative arc shaped by design, disruption, reinvention, and the discovery that plants have the power to connect people back to themselves and each other.
Creative Commerce
Industrial design, home and garden product development, international sourcing, pottery, fountains, planters, and trade distribution.
The Cliff
A major customer collapse forced a defining business pivot and opened the door to a more personal kind of creative work.
Return to the Garden
Drawing, landscape composition, and helping people define their aesthetic reconnected the work to plants, place, and human experience.
Living Systems
Living walls became the medium where architecture, horticulture, construction, hospitality, and emotion could converge.
Teaching the Category
Through Plant Hackers Network, David now helps others enter the living wall category with craft, structure, and confidence.
Press Kit
A media-ready resource for editors, event organizers, and industry publications.
Built to provide fast access to approved bios, speaking topics, project highlights, photography, and background materials for editorial features, podcasts, conferences, and hospitality media coverage.
Short Bio
David Bishop is the founder of Elevation Living Walls, a Southern California design-build studio creating custom living walls and plant-driven environments. His nearly 30-year career spans home and garden product development, horticulture, construction, international sourcing, and the reinvention of spaces through biophilic design.
Speaker Bio
David Bishop is the founder of Elevation Living Walls, a Southern California design-build studio specializing in custom living walls, vertical gardens, and biophilic environments. His nearly 30-year career spans home and garden product development, international sourcing, horticulture, construction, and hospitality-focused design. After building a successful pottery import business through Planet Import, Inc. and the Habitudes brand, a major business disruption led David back to the garden — where drawing, landscape composition, and living walls became a new path of service. His work centers on a simple belief: Plants Grow People™.
Longer editorial background
David Bishop’s work is rooted in the connection between people, plants, materials, and place. Before founding Elevation Living Walls, Bishop built decades of experience in international product development through Planet Import, Inc. and the Habitudes brand, working directly with factories, artisans, and production teams to develop home and garden products for the trade. When a major customer collapse forced a business pivot, he found his way back to the garden through drawing, landscape composition, and helping people define the story of their outdoor environments. That lived understanding of design, commerce, materials, horticulture, and human emotion now informs his work at Elevation — where living walls are treated not as decoration, but as living systems that shape how people experience space.
Global Sourcing Perspective
From factory floors to living architecture.
David’s background in international production gives him a practical understanding of how ideas become real — scalable, buildable, manufacturable environments that balance aesthetics, logistics, materials, and long-term performance.
That perspective now informs the work at Elevation Living Walls. Successful living environments require more than visual inspiration. They depend on structure, irrigation, drainage, installation sequencing, maintenance access, plant health, and operational clarity.
By combining artistic vision with field-tested execution, David approaches living walls as fully integrated systems designed to perform over time in hospitality, commercial, and luxury residential environments.
Selected Work
Projects that help define the category.
A curated look at hospitality, branded, experiential, and private residential environments connected to Elevation Living Walls.
Hospitality
Portola Hotel & Spa
Monterey hospitality living wall transformation designed to elevate guest experience and long-term plant performance.
Commercial Brand
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Branded living wall environments designed for visibility, guest interaction, and memorable customer experience.
Luxury Residential
Private Residence
Plant-driven outdoor living environments crafted to blur the boundary between architecture and nature.
Experiential
Coachella Activation
Large-scale branded plant environments designed for engagement, atmosphere, and social storytelling.
Hospitality
Westin Book Cadillac
Hospitality-focused living wall installation designed to enrich architectural atmosphere and guest perception.
Speaking & Thought Leadership
Available for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and editorial features.
David brings a practitioner’s perspective to conversations surrounding biophilic design, hospitality experience, living systems, plant health, reinvention, and the emotional impact of thoughtfully designed environments.
Why Most Living Walls Fail
A systems-level conversation about irrigation, drainage, root volume, plant health, specification decisions, and the gap between beautiful renderings and buildable reality.
Biophilic ROI
How plant-driven environments influence guest experience, emotional memory, social engagement, and brand differentiation within hospitality spaces.
The Cliff & The Reinvention
A candid story about creative reinvention, losing a major customer, rebuilding through service, and finding a deeper purpose through plants and design.
Plants Grow People™
A broader keynote about connection, wellness, community, and how thoughtfully designed environments influence the way people feel, gather, and interact.
Media Access
Press resources available by request.
Approved biographies, project photography, founder images, logos, and background materials are available for qualified media, podcast producers, event organizers, and industry publications.
Headshots
Professional portraits and speaking images for editorial, podcast, and event use.
Project Photography
Approved hospitality, commercial, residential, and experiential living wall imagery.
Company Logos
Elevation Living Walls, Plant Hackers Network, and associated brand assets.
Approved Bios
Short, medium, and long-form biographies formatted for media and event teams.
Press • Speaking • Collaboration
Interested in an interview, feature, or speaking opportunity?
For media inquiries, speaking engagements, hospitality partnerships, or project consultation opportunities, please contact Elevation Living Walls.
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