diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index e7d3b12862e..321dab6ab4a 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -78,7 +78,6 @@ config/*
 config/plugins/interactive_environments/**/*.ini
 config/plugins/**/.cache
 !config/plugins
-!config/templates
 static/welcome.html.*
 static/welcome.html
 static/client_build_hash.txt
diff --git a/config/templates/mail/activation-email.html b/lib/galaxy/config/templates/mail/activation-email.html
similarity index 100%
rename from config/templates/mail/activation-email.html
rename to lib/galaxy/config/templates/mail/activation-email.html
diff --git a/config/templates/mail/activation-email.txt b/lib/galaxy/config/templates/mail/activation-email.txt
similarity index 100%
rename from config/templates/mail/activation-email.txt
rename to lib/galaxy/config/templates/mail/activation-email.txt
diff --git a/lib/galaxy/util/custom_templates/template.py b/lib/galaxy/util/custom_templates/template.py
index 310455fa50e..05dfa5cd87b 100644
--- a/lib/galaxy/util/custom_templates/template.py
+++ b/lib/galaxy/util/custom_templates/template.py
@@ -9,18 +9,23 @@ the Galaxy root (config/templates).
 import os
 from jinja2 import Environment
 
-DEFAULT_TEMPLATES_DIR = "config/templates"
+DEFAULT_TEMPLATES_DIR = "lib/galaxy/config/templates"
 TEMPLATE_SEP = '>>>>>>'  # Used to split templates into doc/body sections
 
 
-def render(template_path: str, context: dict, templates_dir: str) -> str:
+def render(template_path: str, context: dict, custom_templates_dir: str) -> str:
     """Read and return templated content as string."""
-    with open(_get_template_path(template_path, templates_dir)) as f:
-        template_str = f.read().split(TEMPLATE_SEP)[-1].split('\n', 1)[1]
+    with open(_get_template_path(template_path, custom_templates_dir)) as f:
+        template_str = _get_template_body(f.read())
     tmpl = Environment().from_string(template_str)
     return tmpl.render(**context)
 
 
+def _get_template_body(template: str) -> str:
+    """Remove comment/doc header to return the template body."""
+    return template.split(TEMPLATE_SEP, 1)[-1].split('\n', 1)[1]
+
+
 def _get_template_path(relpath: str, custom_templates_dir: str) -> str:
     """Return template file path."""
     default_path = os.path.join(DEFAULT_TEMPLATES_DIR, relpath)