By: Abby Bowe

It is not unknown that many professors at Wesleyan wear multiple hats. For one chemistry professor, Joanna Webb, she sometimes switches out her lab coat for a gardening apron. 

If you are from Buckhannon or have lived here long enough, surely you have heard of Three Little Buds Flowers. Dr. Joanna Webb, Associate professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Wesleyan, is the founder and owner of this beautiful small business run out of her own home. She got into gardening in 2012 while working as a professor at Wesleyan. In 2017, with the active support of her husband, she took a bucket of her home-grown flowers to a local florist and they fell in love with it!

Three Little Buds Flowers became official in 2018, but really took off in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a time of social distancing and undesired time apart from families. “People bought subscriptions so flowers would get dropped off on loved one’s porches. It was a way to show love from a distance”, Joanna explains. 

You can imagine running a business is very time-consuming, but Joanna Webb manages it gracefully among all her other priorities. In addition to her two titles aforementioned, she is a mother to three “little buds”, a Research Director for all the sciences at Wesleyan, and recently became the Faculty Chair. When asked how she manages all her responsibilities Webb responded, “I have learned how to be really good at being efficient. My family also contributes significantly.”

Gardening is a bit of a different beast in comparison to being a chemist. It takes a good deal of passion to keep up an entire business while grading papers, designing experiments and ensuring there is food prepared on the table at home. 

How does a chemist by trade fall in love with gardening and find the reward in it? Joanna thinks it’s very intriguing that her business is especially different from her day job. Not only is there the physical act of gardening, but also the running of social media, creating a website, and economics behind building a business. She “fell in love with learning and has focused on efficiency”. That statement proves she will always be a chemist, looking for the why behind all things and determining how to optimize the most out of what you have in any aspect. 

While she loves being a farmer and running her small business, Dr. Webb could never step away from teaching, she loves it too much. Instead of running her business full-time right now, if they have the option, Joanna and her husband would like to retire early and do the business full-time in the future. 

However, until then, make sure to look into Three Little Buds Flowers and I highly recommend this gardener as a chemistry professor as well.