He continued to teach there, taking up to twelve scholars into his classes, usually after they had left the local school, and were between eight and eighteen years of age. He eventually established a large collection of living plants. Local gardener groups reported that he was growing over 1,300 different species. In 1864 he was publishing works referring the local extinction of the "Lady's Slipper Orchid" Cypripedium calceolus with the Rev. Henry Harpur Crewe. By 1871 he quitted a schoolmaster, and became a “seedsman and florist”. By 1881 successfully became a “nurseryman and farmer”. He lived with two servants and twenty year old William Whitehead in his house. Whitehead was to eventually become a partner in their market gardening venture.