Profits
& Passions : William Alexander
The joy of a green thumb
By KEITH LORIA
William Alexander in the garden.
It all stared back in 1996 when he and his wife, Anne,
discovered that the adjoining land to their Orange County
home where the neighborhood kids played baseball really
belonged to them and they pondered the possibilities.
“It
was 2,000 square feet with full sun and we thought ‘What
a great place for a garden,’” Alexander said. “We wanted
it to be a beautiful garden so we spent two years staring
at it and buying lots of gardening books, then set out
to make our Victorian garden.”
What
hadn’t dawned on them at the time was that often the
thing that made great Victorian gardens “great” was
that they came with great Victorian gardeners. By the
time they finished, they had a 2,000-square-foot garden
with 22 beds.
“We
probably would have been better off with two or three
beds,” he said. “We grow everything from four types
of tomatoes to green beans to shallots to potatoes.
A lot of greens, strawberries, asparagus, peas, leaks,
a lot of herbs . . . .”
The
53-year-old Alexander found himself spending most of
his leisure time in the garden, spending as much as
15 to 20 hours a week. The expense was also more than
what he expected.
“While
I was out there, things were happening to me and I was
at odds with nature all the time,” he said. “Things
that I hadn’t read about and I was learning day to day,
so I started writing some notes and over five years
it evolved into a book.”
That
book was published last April with the title “The $64
Tomato,” in which he explores the true costs -- and
joys -- of working one’s own soil.
It
is that joy that keeps him going. Even though he has
scaled back recently by planting wild flowers, gardening
is still something he loves and expects to do for a
long time.
“I
think one of the good things is it can be a lifetime
hobby. If it’s early spring, and I’m planting potatoes
and the soil is warmer than the air and birds are out,
it just seems like everything is perfect and feels right,”
he said. “I think there’s something in my genes that
wants to work the earth and grow my own food.”
To
Alexander, there’s nothing better than eating your own
food taken right from your garden. Considering he cans
more than 200 pounds of peaches, grows four different
types of tomatoes and brings up countless other vegetables,
it’s something that his grateful neighbors agree with.
“Even
when I was overwhelmed by it all, I just couldn’t give
up the food,” he said. “The garden is healthy organic
food that really is better and the whole family is just
hooked.”
When
he’s not busy tending to his garden and orchard, Alexander
is off to his “real job” as the director of technology
at the Nathan Klein Institute in Orangeburg, a psychiatric
research institute.
“I
do feel like we’re doing something worthwhile here,
probing the mysteries of the human mind, and I feel
privileged to be a small part of it,” he said. “Due
to the nature of research, I have the kind of creative
freedom that I might not have in a more conventional
job.
“People
here are encouraged to follow their hunches, to chase
down ideas, and apparently that approach to work suits
me well.”
It
must, as Alexander has been with the company for more
than 25 years.
He
is responsible for the computing resources of 400-plus
people, but the position is more than just that of an
IT director.
“What
we do here is everything from research on the cellular
level to human clinical trials. The group that I head
up also writes software that helps to manage clinical
trials,” he said. “I started as a programmer and outlasted
enough people that I rose up and now am director of
technology.”
Twenty-five
years is a long time to stay at any job, but Alexander
said he remains challenged and interested in his work.
“The
fact that the job has changed along with the technology
over two and half decades means that I haven’t been
doing the same job all that time,” he said. “I’ve only
had the same employer.”
So
in a sense, Alexander has grown and nurtured just like
his garden.
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