About
Joan Minklei of Joyful Garden Design is based in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and services the metrowest Boston area. She specializes in unique and beautiful container gardens, small garden design, garden coaching, and fine gardening by the hour. Joan is a 2016 graduate of the Massachusetts Master Gardener Program. She has gardened at Elm Bank, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society property, in the Proven Winners Trial Gardens, the Herb Garden, the Vegetable Garden (which harvested and donated all produce to local food pantries), and the Children’s Garden. She coordinated a CMG program at Fairsted, the Frederick Law Olmsted property in Brookline from 2019-2020. She has studied botany and herbalism at Wellesley College, the Herbal Academy, and Commonwealth Holistic Herbs and completed an apprenticeship in herbalism and permaculture at iFarm in Boxford, MA. She is currently a steward of Beebe Meadow, a naturalized meadow in Wellesley where she assists the town in monitoring the 8-acre protected property for invasive non-native plants and pruning native trees for healthy growth.
She is the current editor of The Mayflower, the newsletter of the
Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts.
(pictured: happy morning at the MFA just prior to arranging at Art in Bloom.)
"The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others,
is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives."
~Gertrude Jekyll