Thompson, Joy (neé Gardiner-Garden) (1923 - 2018)

Born 3 October 1923; died at Moss Vale, SW of Sydney on 15 August, 2018

Joy was appointed at the National Herbarium of NSW as a botanist in 1946, having done a B Sc Agric at the University of Sydney.

In these years she collected under her maiden name: Joy Garden.

Joy soon after married Max Thompson in 1956 and resigned from the Public Service in 1958 to bring up her two children.

She returned part-time 10 years later, studying families and genera that needed revision before she could write them up as part of the Herbarium's Flora of NSW Series. This was a semi-mongraphic Flora, which stopped when the 4-volume 'Flora of NSW' was planned and produced. Joy worked on various legume genera, as well as Tetratheca and Leptospermum, publishing numerous papers and names for about 90 species in these groups. 

Family holidays at Mt Kosciusko each summer led Joy to take a keen interest in the alpine and subalpine plants there, resulting in many herbarium specimens and two papers with Max Gray (Canberra) on this subject.

After she retired in 1982, she continued research as an Honorary Associate for many years, even after she and Max moved from Sydney to Mittagong, finally stopping in 2009. After Max's death and a fall she was cared for in a nursing home.

A much longer biography by Karen Wilson and Barbara Briggs appears in the ASBS Newsletter No.176, Sept 2018

Source: Extracted from: email from Karen Wilson, 20/8/2018, updated from the ASBS obituary.
Portrait Photo: Joy Garden (1952) extracted from: ASBS Newsletter, No.176, Sept 2018

Specimen collection localities for 'Thompson, J + Garden, J.' from AVH (2024)

Data from 5,369 specimens