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Who is Joel The Urban Gardener?
At the age of four, Joel Clement Gaydos, his four older siblings, and their parents moved from Long Island to a small farm in Harmony, a rural town in western Pennsylvania. It was here, with Peanut Butter and Miss Moo (the first of several family cows) and Ralph the pig, that Joel’s horticulture education began. After moving to the farm and getting the family situated, Joel’s father, Clem, took a job at a small, but growing, wholesale nursery selling plants to garden centers in Pennsylvania and nearby states. During occasional road trips where Joel was allowed to tag along, the youngest Gaydos began committing botanical names to memory and Joel soon had a repertoire of scientific plant names that few prospective botanists have before entering college.
When time came for Joel to pursue higher education, a dueling passion for art won out over horticulture and his creative quest led to a Bachelor of Fine Art (a pair of majors in Graphic Design and Photography) as well as a Minor in Botany from Miami University of Ohio. To help pay for school Joel started a landscaping business, and soon breaks in semesters were subsequently filled with the |
| overhauling of grass yards in his hometown of Harmony into vibrant green spaces. Joel concluded his art studies with a Master’s Degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art under the instruction of painter Grace Hartigan. His works of art, many of which include intricate renderings of flora, have been exhibited at the United States Botanical Garden, the Cultural Institution of the Embassy of Korea, and American University, among many other galleries and institutions.
Upon arriving in Baltimore to pursue his graduate degree, Joel took a job at Garlands Garden Center in Catonsville where he became the Green Goods Buyer and Nursery Manager. When Garlands was applauded by Baltimore Magazine in a Home & Garden issue, Joel was cited as the person to seek out for gardening questions by the publication. Throughout his time studying at MICA, Joel’s inner plantsman was calling, and upon graduation Joel resurrected his landscaping passion and created numerous gardens in and around Baltimore. Projects have varied from reforestation to roof gardening, and clients ranged from the Boy Scouts of America to Kweisi Mfume, who was head of the NAACP at the time.
In his spare time, Joel gave lectures on horticulture at area garden clubs and institutions such as the Maryland Chapter of the American Daffodil Society and the Howard County Center for the Arts. He has offered his expertise to numerous nonprofit organizations and provided tree-planting demonstrations for the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership. In 1999, after giving it much thought, Joel declined the position of head gardener at an estate belonging to one of America’s most prominent families. It was not an easy decision, but the offer, if accepted, would have required many adjustments, including moving out of state. It was not a fear of adventure that tempered Joel, but rather a growing fondness for “Charm City” that led to the verdict that his stint in Baltimore was not ready to be over.
Joel became a representative for Greenleaf Nursery for nearly a decade, the wholesale plant company where his father started selling plants more than 30 years ago. He has since started his own business: CLEMENT (in the name of his father) representing independent wholesale nurseries. He currently lives in Hampden in Baltimore.
Contact Joel at his website, CLEMENT HORTICULTURE |
