We are a Husband and Wife team – Wayne and Joy – operating a home-based propagation business in West Gippsland, Victoria Australia.

Joy does the planting, weeding and talking to the plants, while Wayne does all the important work of watering, fertilizing and trying to make sure Joy keeps everything labeled and in some sort of order!!

As Joy writes …….. Joyous Gardens came about almost by accident – you know – “from little things, big things grow”.

I always had a yen for gardening, and fondly remember my first garden, as quite a young child, where I had Geraniums (zonal pelargoniums actually,) Chrysanthemums and Easter Daisy (Michaelmas Daisy), which came from my grandparents’ garden.

Since then growing plants has always been a strong interest, and a few years ago, when life was throwing up some pretty hefty challenges, my green thumbs (yes, some people say I have two of them) became very itchy and propagation of all sorts of plants flourished.

Then, what to do with the resulting plants?  A market stall or two brought success and encouragement, and led to a regular monthly stall at the Drouin Rotary Market. To complement this I created a Facebook page which needed a name, and so Joyous Gardens came into being.

An ever increasing number of plants needed a second outlet, and so a second Saturday of each month, September to May. For a variety of reasons, after many very happy years attending Drouin Market, we withdrew from there, and now have a stall at Caldermeade Farm and Cafe Market, on the third Saturday of each month.

 We now offer for sale, through Facebook and the two market stalls an eclectic mix of home garden plants comprising annuals, perennials, shrubs, and succulents, with some being fairly constant in availability and others very seasonal.

I am always on the lookout for something a bit out of the ordinary, and to this end have imported a variety of perennial seeds form overseas.

I am also happy, where possible, to custom grow, and have over the years supplied large numbers of succulents for wedding bonbonnieres, numerous French Lavenders for hedging, and thousands of vegetable seedlings for the Basix Trace Elements vegetable display at Farmworld, at Lardner Park.

In more recent years I have built up a collection of Salvias, and have a special interest in propagation and selling Poppy plants each Spring.

As with most keen gardeners, even when I have more than enough plants, there is always room for one more; especially if it is weird, wonderful and/or hard to get!

Happy Gardening.

Joy