the botanist

about Kristel

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Hi, I'm Kristel! I live and travel on the UK canal network, aboard my 60-ft narrowboat Layla. Layla is also a floating studio. I love making stuff inspired by my background in botany and evolutionary biology. Living on the water means being constantly immersed in nature. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Both spending time in nature and getting absorbed in making creative work are known to support human wellbeing. This is what I aim to share through Boating Botanist workshops.

What led me to combine nature, art and science and create the Boating Botanist was a series of serendipitous adventures...

an abridged CV in nature, art and science

In 2008, I found myself in Harry’s Inn, a former backpacker’s hostel in Larnaca turned artist accommodation. It had ten modest rooms, a defunct bar with Balkan-inspired music on repeat and a resident cat. I had moved there from my native Netherlands to study for a Foundation Award in Art and Design at the Cyprus College of Art. In the college library, I discovered botanical art and I started experimenting with incorporating botanical shapes in my artmaking.

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My love for the natural world inspired me to study Biology as a science. Between 2009 and 2012, I worked towards a BSc at the University of Sheffield (UK) and got to know the meandering stone walls of the Peak District. When I wasn’t in lectures, I was trying out every creative extracurricular—from bokeh photography to Chinese calligraphy—the University had to offer.

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A scholarship from the EU-funded Erasmus Mundus MSc programme in Evolutionary Biology (MEME) brought me to the Friedman Lab at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in 2013. There, I discovered the Franklin Tree (Franklinia alatamaha), an autumn-flowering species that is extinct in the wild. I worked on the seed development of the Franklin Tree, which, unusually for a deciduous tree, takes two growing seasons to complete. From then on, I was sold on the science of plant form. Here was my chance to bring art and science together!

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In 2015, I began my PhD journey at Harvard University, in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. I spent the next years peering down through a microscope and up into the canopy of the Arnold Arboretum. Driving around the Arboretum’s 183 acres in a golf cart, I discovered as much about winter buds as I could. I also saw firsthand the many benefits green space provided to the residents of Boston.

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Curious about the (mental) health benefits of spending time in nature, I joined the NatureRx Initiative while working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Connecticut. NatureRx seeks to encourage university students to spend more time outdoors. This is where my nature journaling events were born. I also got to fulfil my dream of living in a tiny cottage in the woods. By the Willimantic River, I’d spot otters, wood ducks, beavers and listen to a chorus of barred owls and frogs at night.

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In 2024, I received an offer to teach Plant Form and Physiology as a lecturer (assistant professor) at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire (UK). But I wasn’t ready to give up on the Thoreau-style nature experience. So I traded my Connecticut home for a narrowboat on the British canals. It was trial by fire as, with no previous boating experience whatsoever, I learned to steer Layla towards the Leeds & Liverpool Canal during Brat Summer. (Did I mention there was no running water on board for the first month?)

After getting to know every corner of the canals around Ormskirk, Layla and I are currently exploring as much of the British waterways as we can. We hope to meet you, either while botanizing on the towpath, at a creative event or during an online workshop.

more by me and about me

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I'm fascinated by observation as an activity, a skill and a process. I spoke about it at the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) conference in November 2025.
You can watch a recording of that talk here.

Waterways World featured me in their March 2025 issue! Read it here (subscribers only)

Read my Arnoldia article Spring is the New Fall about winter buds in shagbark hickory (Carya ovata).

View Winter Twig Keys: Manuals for Tracing Time, an online exhibit I created with the Harvard Library.