7,307 divided by 8 equals 913.375. The former number constitutes the total number of hours that Diane Kean spent volunteering as a member of the Northern Neck Master Gardeners since joining the group in 2008. The latter figure represents how many eight-hour days that would equal. In its magnitude, the figure is staggering.
Diane lived in Tappahannock, most recently in a condo in the Riverside, to the south of the Downing Bridge abutment. Her volunteering largely was twofold, first working to enhance the publicly accessible gardens at George Washington’s Birthplace, at Stratford Hall, as well as at other smaller venues, many of which are demonstration gardens that the Master Gardeners tend as educational opportunities to show the public what can be done.
Those were the places where she got down on the ground weeding, planting, cultivating, staking, and doing the usual chores required to maintain a good garden. The other part of Diane’s volunteer time found her at the computer, poring away at whatever she could find that would be beneficial to her fellow master gardeners.
Diane wanted gardeners to have whatever materials were available to keep them informed about best practices, new plants and tools, and important garden spots that could be visited to learn more. To that end, she founded “The Northern Neck Garden Post,” an online publication that covered a spectrum of articles.
She published the Post every three months and was constantly in search of articles that could inform and delight her readership. If she knew that someone liked gardening, she was persistent in asking for submissions. Within the Master Gardener community, she was attentive to other members and their interests, particularly the new ones, whom I suspect she also viewed as potential future contributors to “The Garden Post.”
Along with her own publication, she forwarded on to her readers all of the online issues that other chapters were putting out to their own members. She also would pass along individual items that she thought would be geared to specific members’ interests. As a volunteer, Diane was indefatigable. She calmly pushed ahead with her projects, ever hopeful that what she was doing would be helpful to those in her orbit.
Without wishing to be trite, Diane also was a pillar of Saint Timothy’s Catholic Church in Tappahannock, which she attended on an almost daily basis. She would use the word, “focused,” to describe her church membership. Her religious faith was entwined with her love of nature and gardening and her view of herself as one serving the needs of others.
Diane worked to keep herself fit as well. She was a slim person and she exercised twice a day, morning and afternoon, by taking long walks around her neighborhood. On the afternoon of July 1, while walking along Water Lane in Tappahannock, a few blocks from her home, a car bounded over the curb, striking her to the ground. She died at the scene. The operator of the car was charged with driving under the influence and being on drugs.
The magnitude of the community’s loss is incalculable on many fronts. Her activities that I have described herein are but a fraction of what she did. She eschewed praise or recognition, both of which she left for others, always “focused” on her own mission as she understood it to be. She had a wry sense of humor and was amused when I told friends last year when she was given an award recognizing, as of then, having volunteered over 6,000 hours to the Master Gardener programs, that she would be “suing” the group, for we all knew it was over 12,000.
In the crypt of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Latin inscription over the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, the church’s architect, reads in English, “If you seek his monument, look around you.” Across the Northern Neck, if you seek Diane’s monument, look at the many spots of beauty that she fostered and tended.
Diane Powers Kean, November 26, 1943 – July 1, 2024. R.I.P.
