 Inside the house, McClintock's library contained 4,000 books, his herbarium had 3,500 sheets of bamboos, and his card index of heather cultivars numbered 3,000 in non-digitalised form.Notable among the events of his later life were, in 1996, the award, from the RHS, of a VMH – the Victoria Medal for Horticulture – and a serious accident in 1998, aged 84.While botanising in Sicily (looking for ), McClintock fell down a scree mountainside near Trapani, requiring transportation by helicopter to hospital in Palermo, where he had 40 stitches.