But here is the rest of the story:

I grew up in a family where my mother was the original Martha Stewart, my father an engineer, and my Grandmother a wonderful gardener who taught me what a weed was. My two sisters were very, very artistic. While they drew, painted, and etched their way through school, I played varsity sports and studied advanced calculus and college chemistry. I was participating in my own family "Yin/Yang".

Then it was off to Penn, where I planned to major in pre-med bio. I soon discovered that I was never going to get over my repulsion to the smell of formaldehyde and I switched to a double major in Architecture and Fine Arts. The change was as uninformed as the fact that I had a job working in the campus bookstore managing the art supply section... I now think of it as divine intervention... For the next two years I was required to draw buildings, landscapes and architectural interiors every day, our sketch books were the training ground for visual thinking. On the home front, my world was always overflowing with plants, mostly cuttings of begonias and impatiens from the summer's end garden beds, and I carted these plants back and forth with me from home to school.

Towards the end of my junior year, upon sage counsel from my father, I discovered that my lifelong love for plants could be combined with architecture. I believe my Dad said something like, "isn't there a Field of landscape architecture?" - no pun intended - After graduating from Penn I went on to the University of Arizona where I earned my degree in Landscape Architecture. I am a registered Landscape Architect in Rhode Island and Massachusetts as well as nationally certified to practice throughout the country.