Sun·stone [SUN-stōn]
verb
Connecting people to nature.
From the Garden to the Feed
See what we’re growing in real time on Instagram — and join our Facebook group, Sunstone Garden Groupies, to swap stories, ask questions, and grow alongside other plant-loving folks.
About
Sunstone is a garden consulting and education business based in Mahoning County, Ohio. Led by, me, Irisa Green. Sunstone is shaped by over a decade of hands-on garden and landscape experience. Rooted in creativity and intention, my work grows from a simple belief: people thrive when they’re connected to nature.
Rooted in Community
My work is primarily one-on-one and hands-on.
From those gardens, the work naturally extends outward into the community. A small mobile garden bed allows me to bring nature directly to neighborhoods, pop-ups, and gatherings — meeting people where they are and creating simple, approachable ways to interact with nature.
That same approach continues through our greenhouse and trial gardens and through pollinator-focused partnerships with local organizations, where I help design, install, and support living spaces that strengthen the ecosystem and give communities the tools to care for what they grow.
Training & Stewardship
Working alongside plants and people every day led me to seek out formal training to strengthen the way I design and steward gardens.
I am a Certified Northeast Ohio Master Rain Gardener and verified contractor with the Mahoning County Soil & Water Conservation District, a National Garden Clubs Landscape Design Consultant, and a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, continuing toward certification as a Professional Landscape Designer (CPLD).
I’m also an active member of several regional and national specialty plant organizations, including the American Dahlia Society, Dahlia Society of Ohio, Mahoning Valley Dahlia Society, and Garden Club of Ohio, where I continue learning, experimenting, and sharing my love of Dahlias. In my spare time, you’ll usually find me in the garden hand-pollinating and exhibiting dahlias — a longtime hobby that’s led me to begin training as an American Dahlia Society candidate judge.
CROYDON MASTERPEICE
FIELD NOTES
Sunstone History
Sunstone Garden grew the way most gardens do — slowly, season by season.
I’ve always worked with my hands and by my early twenties — while starting a family — creating became how I moved through adulthood. I sewed, crocheted, painted, and designed handmade goods for Etsy and local markets — always nature-centered.
In 2015, during a difficult time in my life, I began volunteering at Fellows Riverside Gardens in Youngstown, Ohio. Working among flowers — inside the conservatory and out in the beds — quieted my mind and showed me that gardening is handmade. It was also where dahlias first caught my eye. I joined a local herb grower's guild and completed Master Gardener training to deepen my plant knowledge.
My name is Irisa Dawn Flowers — now Green.
“Literally named keeper of the horticultural realm.”
That line became the first of many short garden quotes I’ve written over the years. Historical gardening and old-world practices slowly found their way into my interests too. I briefly participated in a medieval faire as “Lady Grene,” a rose vendor and herbalist, which helped shape the hands-on, heritage-inspired style that still influences my work today.
By late 2018, what had started as creative work and market tables began to feel like something more intentional. I found myself thinking seriously about how to shape it into a real garden business. I kept attending local craft shows and farmers markets, refined what I offered, developed a brand, and designed my first logo in Photoshop — brown at the time, years before it turned green. In early 2019, I made it official and formed Sunstone Garden LLC. Conversations at those markets soon turned into my first clients, many of whom are still with me today.
Much of my early work was garden assistance for older homeowners. I worked beside them — weeding, planting, listening. One client, a retired music professor in her nineties, would play the piano with the windows open while I worked outside. I attended her final recital before she passed away, and that was the moment I understood that gardening wasn’t maintenance work for me — it was connection. It was art. It was people’s lives unfolding through their spaces.
Around the same years, dahlias kept appearing — first at the gardens, then in a shared plot with my daughter at the herb guild, and later through my longest-running client and mentor, whose beds I still tend. After four years of growing them myself, I’ve begun exhibiting and becoming more involved with local dahlia societies. They’ve remained a steady thread through my work.
Today, Sunstone focuses on consultations, design, and hands-on installations — especially pollinator gardens and native plantings for homes, neighborhoods, and select commercial spaces. I work side by side with clients to help them understand and care for their gardens, and many of my original clients are still with me today.
Why Sunstone? Simply put, it resonates so deeply for me both nostalgically and presently. My most peaceful moments are those when the Sun is beaming down on my body with its warmth, guidance and reassurance. Sunstone possesses energy as bright and cheery as its vibrant aesthetic, the Sunstone is linked with the playful whimsy of childhood. While maintaining the daily stress of adulting in the modern world, Sunstone reminds us to keep a healthy balance between career demands and fun in the sun.
That’s what Sunstone is meant to share.
Not just gardens — but that feeling.