Joseph Marek is a licensed landscape architect based in Los Angeles who has been designing and building gardens for 25 years throughout California. Joseph began visiting Lotusland soon after his arrival in Southern California in 1994 and right after the gardens were opened to the public. He joined the Board of Trustees in January 2018 and is the current chair of the board’s Governance Committee. He is also co-chairinged Lotusland Celebrates in 2022 and 2023. Joseph was drawn to gardening and the arts as a young boy. Growing up in an Air Force family and living in such far-flung places as South Texas, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the German Rhineland, and Tidewater Virginia, he was exposed to a multitude of climates and plant communities, and to the gardening traditions in each of them. After graduating from Yale with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and the University of Virginia with a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, he settled in southern California in 1994. He worked with Nancy Goslee Power in Santa Monica until establishing the office of Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture in 2001. His design work is heavily influenced by his early exposure to gardens and by his continuing travels to gardens around the country and the world. Joseph works on gardens of all sizes but finds particular enjoyment designing personal gardens for individuals and families. Joseph also serves on the Board of Directors of The Garden Conservancy and chairs the organization’s Open Days Committee. Joseph is an ardent advocate for organ donation. His partner, John Bernatz, was the recipient of a kidney donation in 2017 from an altruistic living donor. Both JOhn and his donor are thriving today. Joseph is also dedicated to celebrating diversity and all the good that it brings—from the plant habitats in the gardens he creates to our society and nation as a whole.