Gerald is one of the county's most well respected and active botanists and has inspired many by his enthusiasm and detailed observation of wildlife behaviour.

He was born and still lives in a beautiful old farmhouse at Venus Hill, Bovingdon in south west Hertfordshire, where in his working life he ran a small-holding. He was also employed as a herdsman on the farms around Flaunden milking a herd of Jerseys for many years and later running a herd of 100 beef suckler cows. He still has two old Guernsey cows, (20 and 18 years old) which graze Frogmore Meadow nature reserve in the Chess valley in the summer and come home in the winter. He has been volunteer warden of this Site of Special Scientific Interest since it was acquired by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust (HMWT) in 1986.

Gerald, together with his friend Jill Saunders, made a major contribution to the Flora of Hertfordshire Project (1987-2009) recording much of the west and south west of the county, producing methodical site surveys and tetrad summaries. He contributes to the ongoing work of the Herts Flora Group, carrying out searches for and monitoring scarce species. He is a volunteer plant recorder for HMWT and has surveyed many of their nature reserves including Balls Wood (the results were published in The Hertfordshire Naturalist last year) and Waterford Heath.