Joan Floren is a woman of many trades, as indicated by her small business in Wayzata, Joan of All Trades. When she’s not crafting small custom jewelry, designing floral arrangements, or volunteering through her church, Floren can be caught with her hands in the dirt.
Floren was one of six featured gardeners to show off their handiwork for the Meeker County Master Gardener’s Tour Tuesday evening. Her garden, which is described as a traditional English quadrant garden, is bursting with a variety of annuals, perennials, herbs and vegetables.
“Growing things that you could eat was a big draw for me,” Floren said about her hobby. And there’s no shortage of edible treats in her garden, which has exactly 18 vegetables with more than 20 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. Beyond the tomatoes, Floren has about 30 varieties of dahlias strewn about her property.
“Tomatoes and dahlias are my two primary loves,” Floren said.
Floren grew up south of Mankato in Wells, Minnesota. Rooted from a family past-time, Floren’s love of gardening stems from her mother’s shared passion. When she was 12, Floren was given her very first garden — a small plot that was hers to plant and tend to however she saw fit. For the next 53 years, Floren would dedicate as much space as possible to a garden with each new place she would call home.
According to Floren, she would even go so far as to rent spaces in order for her to garden when there were no other options.
Now, there seems to be no shortage of space for Floren.
A TALE OF TWO GARDENS
Floren’s sprawling backyard is something out of a picture book. The grounds roll down to Spring Lake’s western shore, where a buffer garden, complete with hostas, wildflowers and perennials, rests lakeside.
“This is one of my favorites spots,” Floren said.
The main garden, however, is only one of two large-scale gardens Floren maintains.
Floren and her husband David, a Dassel native, own two homes, in Wayzata and Dassel. Their rural Dassel lake residence is a Scandinavian-style rambler they bought and renovated four years ago, and the couple built a matching potting shed/greenhouse for Floren to tend to vegetables and annuals during the spring. The land, which originally was known as the Haapala House, is now Floren’s domain for greenery.
“It’s always going to be the Haapala House,” Joan said, “and Wincie Haapala was a renowned gardener.”
To keep the legacy of the Haapalas, Floren saved what she could from the original grounds’ gardens, such as the hostas in the buffer garden. Other plants Floren has saved from her influencers include her grandmother’s lush variegated sedum and a sole iris from her mother’s garden — which was the only surviving plant from her mother’s garden when Floren visited in recent years.
Everything else comes from Floren’s Wayzata garden.
“If you can believe it, my garden in Wayzata is much more substantial,” Floren said with a smile. The Dassel garden is significant in size and bloom, and for Floren’s first time showing her affinity for gardening in the Meeker County Master Gardener’s Garden Tour, she should be pleased with it. But for a master gardener, she could still find what needed improvement.
THE WORK AND DEDICATION
“I’ve never had such a messy garden,” she said, pointing out sprouts of grass and a few weeds between herbs and flowers.
Those flaws are nearly impossible to catch when not looking for them, for Floren’s garden is teeming with rich colors and shades of green. But Floren has been juggling her hobby with a diagnosis of colon cancer since April; and her chemotherapy treatment began the day of the garden tour.
“Between the weather and the illness, it’s not a lot of time to get things done,” Floren said. And while Floren takes the time she needs to recuperate, she has an arsenal of help from her husband and her friends.
“It’s unusual to have help with the garden,” Floren said, “but friends have taken it upon themselves to come and lend a hand.”
Her husband, who she said isn’t a regular helper in the garden, is more of her “regulator-guy.”
“He can get everything done on a timeline,” she said. “He’s very regimented.”
And yet, David could be seen out in the garden along with three friends to the Florens, doing what they could to get the garden in order for the tour. And even though Joan couldn’t be there to show it off personally, she had a feeling that tourists would be satisfied with what they found.
“There’s an ‘a-ha’ moment when people come over the hill,” she said. “A lot of people who didn’t know this was here are shocked when they see it for the first time. Half the worth is the view of it. It’s a nice whole package.”
