I’m Honora Toole, founder of Flora Fina Gardens. I was raised here in Berkshire County and although I first started working with plants on small farms and estate gardens in my teens and early twenties, it was of course in childhood that my fascination with the natural world began.

I was fortunate to grow up with a small corridor of undisturbed woodland abutting my home in Lee. I spent many hours prying into spittle-bug nests, stalking ants, and creating stories about the even lesser visible creatures. Whom, I imaged, lived in hollowed out trees and played hide and seek among the sedge. I remember a profound feeling of magic there and often I would simply sit, and observe, and feel very special and powerful to be apart of it.

As I grew I spent less and less time in those woods and it wasn’t until after graduating from high school and taking a job on a farm in Sheffield that I rediscovered this passion and curiosity regarding the relationship between myself and “nature”. I became interested in Permaculture and received my Permaculture Design Certificate in 2009. My interest inspired a move to Portland, Oregon in 2011 and not long after that I started offering home gardening services, including design and installation. In those early years I said yes to everything and learned so much along the way; from how to take on a neglected espalier apple tree to the proper way to prepare a patio foundation. Over the years I have also completed the Master Gardener Program through the Oregon State University extension service and attended numerous workshops, classes, and webinars that have helped inform my learning.

In 2021 I came home to the Berkshires. A year later I had the privilege to step into the role of Team Leader and Head Propagator for Helia Native Nursery in Alford, MA. This position afforded me alot experience in a short period of time. It also offered me a deeper appreciation for the intrinsic, unimposing, yet tough as nails, beauty embodied in the native plant and pollinator communities of our region and how working with these plants and helping them to succeed has a powerfully positive effect on the beings around them.

In all of these experiences I find myself closer to the little girl who was curious about and in-tune with, the most mundane and profound kind of magic. It is my desire to use my passion and experience to create garden spaces that invite us to belong to the land we live on, to the communities we share with and of course, most especially, to ourselves.