The Meditative Power of Flowers

Tonya Hackley’s flower enterprise grew organically out of her lifelong love of gardening and her deep appreciation of the power of plants to heal and to teach human beings about ecosystems and even about consciousness. “Gardening [for me] is like breathing,” she says. “I can’t stop it.” Hackley studied horticulture at URI; she has taught yoga and meditation; and she built a stone circle (35 feet in diameter) in her back garden.

After taking online floral courses in 2018–19, she brought together both of her worlds in the business name Stone Circle Flowers. Through 2020 and 2021, she supplied flowers to a local café for its greenhouse dinners, and she decided to expand her flower beds and begin selling at farmers markets. Hackley plants seedlings outside as early as March.

“I love growing unusual colors or species and have people say, ‘I’ve never seen that!’” For fall she’ll have lisianthus, dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias, strawflowers, snapdragons, asters and more. And she’s very careful about not selling anything that might be harmful to children or pets.

Find Stone Circle Flowers at the South Kingstown Farmers Market and on Instagram @stone_circle_flowers.
StoneCircleFlowers.com