Laura Perkins is the Horticulturalist at Stone Barns Center. Laura spent much of her childhood on a family homestead in the Catskills, where she grew to love farm work and life. Early in her career she moved to a farm-focused community in California, working on farms, at the local farmers’ market, and at the North Coast Co-op, a store that serves as a primary outlet for the area’s farmers. Upon returning to the Hudson Valley, she served on the board of Common Ground Farm and worked as a gardener and landscaper on various estates, including a 250-acre native plant garden.

At Stone Barns Center, Laura tends the formal gardens and develops and maintains the surrounding landscape while supplying Blue Hill with foraged edible foods, giving visitors opportunities for sensory immersion in the landscape, and enhancing wildlife habitat and the ecological resilience of the land.

Off the farm: Laura lives in Peekskill, where she volunteers on her town’s parks board and in school gardens.