Boston Flora

Tag: Gardens Trust

  • Tuesday, April 1, 9:00 am – 10:30 am Eastern – Beatrix Farrand: Garden Artist, Online

    The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.

    In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.

    This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.

    The final talk in this series will be given by The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s own Judith Tankard. Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959) was one of the first landscape architects in the United States. She began her practice in the 1890s and retired in 1950. During these years she had a thriving practice with a broad range of important clients, including Mildred Bliss at Dumbarton Oaks, her most famous commission. She was a life-long admirer of Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. In the 1950s, she acquired Jekyll’s archives of plans and photographs which she subsequently donated to the University of California, Berkeley, where they can be studied today.

    Judith B Tankard is a landscape historian and preservation consultant. She received a M.A. In Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and taught at the Landscape Institute of Harvard University for over 20 years. She received a Gold Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and was recently named an Honorary Member of the Garden Club of America. She is the author of twelve prize-winning books on landscape history, including Beatrix Farrand: Garden Artist, Landscape Architect (The Monacelli Press, 2022) and Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement (Harry N Abrams, 2004, revised 2nd ed Timber Press, 2018). She also writes articles and book reviews for Hortus. She lives in the Boston, Massachusetts, area and has a small garden on Martha’s Vineyard. Her new book Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood, with co-author Martin Wood, is scheduled for publication in Spring 2025.

    Image: Beatrix Farrand’s cool borders at Garland Farm, photo ©Judith Tankard

  • Tuesday, March 18, 6:00 am – 7:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Gertrude Jekyll: Artist, Gardener, Craftswoman

    The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.

    In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.

    This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.

    Talk 3 takes place March 18 with Dr. Caroline Ikin. Gertrude Jekyll has been described as a ‘one-woman Arts and Crafts Movement’, her contribution spanning the decorative arts as well as gardening. Her approach was founded on an appreciation of local tradition, vernacular architecture, hand-making and floral beauty, and was informed by the works of Ruskin. Jekyll is celebrated for her garden designs, plant breeding and particular brand of ‘artist-gardening’ which she expounded in her many books and articles, but she was also a skilled artist, maker and designer. This talk will focus on Jekyll’s garden at Munstead Wood where her arts and crafts ethos achieved full expression, and will also explore her activities in decorative art, conservation and collecting.

    Dr Caroline Ikin is a Curator at the National Trust covering Munstead Wood, Standen and Nymans. She has previously worked in museums and for the Gardens Trust and her research interest is in nineteenth century art, architecture and gardens. She is author of The Victorian Garden (Shire Library, 2012), The Victorian Gardener (Shire Library, 2014), The Kitchen Garden (Amberly Publishing, 2017) and has written for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Garden History, Furniture History, Museums Journal and various other publications, and is now working on a new book on Victorian Gardens. She was awarded the Mavis Batey Essay Prize in 2022.

    Image: below detail, Michaelmas daisies, Munstead Wood, from George S. Elwood and Gertrude Jekyll, Some English Gardens (1904), Biodiversity Heritage Library, public domain

  • Wednesday, March 26, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Artists’ Gardens: Gardens of the North American Impressionists

    Plants and gardens have long served as a creative inspiration for artists. They are places of color, structure and changing light, representations of memories and emotions, expressions of the cycle of life and the passing of time. When the garden is one created by the artist themself, the scope for exploration and engagement intensifies and, whether garden-lover or art-lover, we are drawn in to their stories and meanings. In this four-part series, The Gardens Trust will explore a range of gardens created and celebrated by their artist owners. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

    North American Impressionists were inspired by what was happening in European art. In 1872 American artist William Merritt Chase told the New York Times ‘My God, I would rather go to Europe than go to Heaven!’ Philadelphia’s 1876 World’s Fair Centennial International Exhibition inspired the quest for ‘olden tyme’ plants and poetry, fulfilled by Childe Hassam’s muse, the poet Celia Thaxter on Appledore Island. Parallels can be drawn between Monet at Giverny and the gardens created by John Henry Twachtman at Greenwich, Connecticut and the Cos Cob and Old Lyme Art Colonies in the same state. In 1893 Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition which featured the mural Primitive Woman by Mary Fairchild MacMonnies facing Modern Woman by Mary Cassatt. Gardens and children were ingeniously combined by Cassatt and Canadian Impressionist Helen MacNicoll. Tired of narrow artistic traditions at home, three generations of American artists including Frederick Frieseke travelled to Monet’s Giverny to live, or lodge at the Hotel Baudy.

    Caroline Holmes is a University of Cambridge ICE Academic Tutor and Course Director; has lectured in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe and Japan as well as for cruises crossing the Baltic, Caribbean, Mediterranean and Red Seas, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Author of 12 books including Monet at Giverny, Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s water lilies; and Impressionists in their Gardens, she is a consultant designer specialising in evoking historic, artistic and symbolic references, and contributes to Viking TV. Her website is https://horti-history.com. Image: detail, On the Terrace by John Henry Twatchman (c.1890-1900), Smithsonian American Art Museum, public domain

  • Wednesday, March 19, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Artists’ Gardens: Monet at Giverny, Online

    Plants and gardens have long served as a creative inspiration for artists. They are places of color, structure and changing light, representations of memories and emotions, expressions of the cycle of life and the passing of time. When the garden is one created by the artist themself, the scope for exploration and engagement intensifies and, whether garden-lover or art-lover, we are drawn in to their stories and meanings. In this four-part series, The Gardens Trust will explore a range of gardens created and celebrated by their artist owners. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

    The first session takes place March 19. In 1883 the painter Claude Monet moved into a new home, Le Pressoir in Giverny. Below the house he created gardens whose colours vibrantly or contemplatively evolved under the Normandy skies. Initially he painted the rural motifs of the poplars and grain stacks and then, until his death in 1926, he devoted himself to the floral canvas of his own making. Botanically and horticulturally skilled, Monet grew the latest in irises and water lilies, watching them as the day reflected its course in their shapes, moments captured for eternity in over 500 paintings. The landscapes of Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world) woodblock prints fed into Monet’s sense of perspective and use of plants. The meticulous restoration of Giverny in the 1970s provides the canvas to explore the man, his paintings and his gardens. We will also briefly compare these gardens with Le Jardin Monet Marmottan in Japan.

    Caroline Holmes is a University of Cambridge ICE Academic Tutor and Course Director; has lectured in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe and Japan as well as for cruises crossing the Baltic, Caribbean, Mediterranean and Red Seas, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Author of 12 books including Monet at Giverny, Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s water lilies; and Impressionists in their Gardens, she is a consultant designer specialising in evoking historic, artistic and symbolic references, and contributes to Viking TV. Her website is https://horti-history.com

  • Tuesday, March 11, 6:00 am – 7:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – William Robinson: The Horticultural John Ruskin

    The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.

    In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.

    This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.

    Talk 2 is entitled William Robinson: The Horticultural John Ruskin. Born in Ireland, Robinson moved at the age of 23 to work in the Royal Botanic Society’s Garden in Regent’s Park, then on the edge of London. A great admirer of, and later correspondent with, Ruskin, he drew a direct analogy between the ‘bedding system’ which he hated, and Ruskin’s description of the industrial world. In his talk, Richard will outline Robinson’s gardening and prolific writing career and discuss the ways in which he hoped to improve the lives of the poorer members of society, becoming, as a 1931 Country Life article declared, ‘England’s greatest gardener’.

    Richard Bisgrove has degree in Horticultural Science and Landscape Architecture. As a lecturer in horticulture and landscape management at Reading University his main research interests were the management of species rich grasslands (the flowery mead!) and garden history, with particular emphasis on Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. He was for many years a member of the Council and Conservation Committee of the Garden History Society and of the Gardens Panel of the National Trust. His publications include The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln, 1992; University of California Press 2000) and William Robinson: the wild gardener (Frances Lincoln, 2008).

    Image: Gravetye Manor, William Robinson’s house and main terrace, photo ©Richard Bisgrove

  • Wednesday, March 12, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Places to Play: South Shields’ Marine Park

    Designed landscapes are typically defined as places laid out for artistic effect or aesthetic purposes, somewhere to contemplate and admire. Yet many people have a much more active relationship with outdoor spaces, engaging with them for jogging, cycling, ball games, playgrounds and carnival rides. They are places to play.

    This Gardens Trust series will examine the relationship between historic designed landscapes and organized recreation. We’ll be exploring children’s outdoor play, a world-famous theme park set among a Grade 1 Regency landscape, a Premier League football stadium that was once a Victorian pleasure ground, an early 18th-century estate that is now a golf course, and a Victorian public park which was opposed by local workers despite its claimed recreational and health-giving benefits.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £26.25). Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Final Week: The 19th century saw significant growth in the creation of public parks. Increased urbanization in this period led to greater calls for green and open-air spaces to mitigate the perceived dangers of air pollution and poor sanitation, and a micro-history study of one park can provide broader historical understanding of these medical, social, and cultural contexts that led to their creation. Taking the case study of South Shields’ Marine Park, this talk will explore its history in relation to these main themes: the idea of the coast as a restorative place; nineteenth-century understandings of air pollution and urbanization with respect to public health; the role of ‘rational recreation’ in public parks (such as tennis and bowls) as a form of explicit social control; and class differences in popular understandings of health. In this way it will extend our understanding of the local as well as national contexts within which landscape decisions were made by intersecting the historiography of public parks with that of health and medicine.

    Abigail Carr was the recipient of the Gardens Trust’s 2023 Mavis Batey Essay Prize for her work on South Shields Marine Park, the subject of this talk. A celebration of new historians that have excelled in the field of garden history, this prestigious award was named after Mavis Batey (1921-2013), the pioneering garden historian, conservationist and President of the Garden History Society from 1985-2000. Abigail is now in the first year of her Midlands-4-Cities-funded PhD at the University of Leicester, researching the 18th-century conceptualization of the English wet nurse.

    Image: Marine Park, ©Abigail Carr

  • Tuesday, March 4, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens: The Origins of the Arts and Crafts Garden

    The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.

    In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.

    This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .

    Talk 1 will take place March 4 with Richard Bisgrove. What eventually became the Arts and Crafts Movement had two strands: a rejection of ‘modern’ painters in favour of mediaeval art and a reaction to the perceived horrors of the Industrial Revolution. The leading proponents of these ideas were John Ruskin and William Morris. In his talk, Richard will outline very briefly the lives of these two men and discuss their interests in, and influences on, the gardens of their age.

    Richard Bisgrove has degree in Horticultural Science and Landscape Architecture. As a lecturer in horticulture and landscape management at Reading University his main research interests were the management of species rich grasslands (the flowery mead!) and garden history, with particular emphasis on Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. He was for many years a member of the Council and Conservation Committee of the Garden History Society and of the Gardens Panel of the National Trust. His publications include The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln, 1992; University of California Press 2000) and William Robinson: the wild gardener (Frances Lincoln, 2008). Image: The Red House, William Morris’s house ‘planted’ in a Kentish orchard, photo Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive, 1983, under a CC BY 4.0 license

  • Wednesday, March 5, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Places to Play: Richmond Golf Club, of Dukes, Trees, and Golf

    Designed landscapes are typically defined as places laid out for artistic effect or aesthetic purposes, somewhere to contemplate and admire. Yet many people have a much more active relationship with outdoor spaces, engaging with them for jogging, cycling, ball games, playgrounds and carnival rides. They are places to play.

    This Gardens Trust series will examine the relationship between historic designed landscapes and organized recreation. We’ll be exploring children’s outdoor play, a world-famous theme park set among a Grade 1 Regency landscape, a Premier League football stadium that was once a Victorian pleasure ground, an early 18th-century estate that is now a golf course, and a Victorian public park which was opposed by local workers despite its claimed recreational and health-giving benefits.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £26.25). Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Week Four: Sudbrook Park, currently the home of the Richmond upon Thames Golf Club, has an interesting, if not chequered, history. Created in the early 18th century by John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll; at its peak it totaled a hundred and thirty acres of freehold and copyhold land, with a fine mansion designed by James Gibbs at its center. The estate appears on John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, which records the owner as Argyll’s widow. In the early 19th century, the estate was owned by Member of Parliament and public servant Robert Wilmot Horton, who made extensive improvements, enlarging and remodeling the pleasure grounds in the fashionable gardenesque style. The estate almost succumbed to the Richmond building boom of the mid-19th century but was saved at the last minute to become a hydropathic establishment and eventually, in 1898, a golf club. This talk will give an overview of its changing fortunes and its colorful owners and tenants.

    Sandra Pullen is a member of the Gardens Trust Education and Training Committee and has been active in their online and in-person events since 2020. She completed an MA in the history of landscape and garden history from the Institute of Historical Research in 2021. As well as lecturing regularly on various aspects of garden history, she has been a guide for several historic houses in the Twickenham area.

    Image: G. Eyre Brooks, Sudbrook Park, Petersham, Surrey (c.1840), courtesy of Richmond upon Thames Art Collection

  • Tuesday, February 25, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Plantmania: Orchidmania

    The desire to possess new, rare and thus expensive plants has been a feature of garden-making since it began and continues to be so; as recently as February 2022 bulbs of Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Tears’ were changing hands for £1,850 each. But at least this obsession didn’t bankrupt a nation! This Gardens Trust mini-series tells the story of the mania that developed around three of the most sought-after plants: tulips, rhododendrons and orchids. Each lecture will delve into how, and when these the plants arrived and what happened when they did, explaining along the way just what it was about them that caused such a furor – and a hole in the pocket.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this February 25 individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 3 sessions at a cost of £21 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £15.75). Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    This craze began in London in 1731 with a single plant of Bletia purpurea sent to plant collecting nut Peter Collinson from Providence Island, the Bahamas. But it was not until the nineteenth century that silly money was being spent and then only because glasshouse technology had evolved. Requiring collecting in regions challenging to travel, difficult to transport long distances by sea, tricky to cultivate and even more so to breed, orchids were the most expensive plant of that time. An extensive collection was the ultimate gardening statement of conspicuous consumption, but they were also very addictive and a number of aficionados bankrupted themselves through collecting. Still today there is a black market while, legally, specimens can cost tens of thousands.

    Dr Toby Musgrave FSA FLS is a garden and plants historian, horticulturist and author. His books have covered a wide range of subjects from head gardeners to heritage fruit and vegetables, plant hunters to paradise gardens, and a biography of Sir Joseph Banks. He lives in Denmark where he gardens one of the historic de Runde Haver and when not gardening, teaching or writing he works as a submersible pilot. Image: S. Drake, Cycnoches egertonianum, detail, from James Bateman, The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala (1842), Wikimedia Commons, public domain

  • Tuesday, February 19, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but Recorded) – Plantmania: Rhododendronmania, Online

    The desire to possess new, rare and thus expensive plants has been a feature of garden-making since it began and continues to be so; as recently as February 2022 bulbs of Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Tears’ were changing hands for £1,850 each. But at least this obsession didn’t bankrupt a nation! This Gardens Trust mini-series tells the story of the mania that developed around three of the most sought-after plants: tulips, rhododendrons and orchids. Each lecture will delve into how, and when these the plants arrived and what happened when they did, explaining along the way just what it was about them that caused such a furor – and a hole in the pocket.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this February 19 individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 3 sessions at a cost of £21 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £15.75). Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Until the plant hunting expedition of Joseph Hooker to Sikkim between 1847 and ’51 there were only five species and a few cultivars in British gardens (two from America, two from Europe and R. arboreum from north India). They found a place in the American garden but were pretty dull. Then arrived 28 new species with brightly colored and attractive flowers, some even scented, and in the years to 1871 the same amount was spent on rhododendrons as was then the national debt! But there is much more to the story that staggering sums.

    Dr Toby Musgrave FSA FLS is a garden and plants historian, horticulturist and author. His books have covered a wide range of subjects from head gardeners to heritage fruit and vegetables, plant hunters to paradise gardens, and a biography of Sir Joseph Banks. He lives in Denmark where he gardens one of the historic de Runde Haver and when not gardening, teaching or writing he works as a submersible pilot.