As of 2011, Dean has been searching out and trying to identify wild flowers for over 60 years. He has belonged to the Hamilton Naturalists Club for 45 years and spent them, at first, learning about the local wild flowers and then, for the last 30 years, passing the information along to others on wild flower walks. He has volunteered for 12 years in the herbarium of the Royal Botanical Gardens and spent thousands of hours in the forests and fields of the RBG grounds and the Dundas Valley. He has found wild flowers in bloom during every month of the year, even during the depths of winter, and has discovered two species never before seen in the area. Although not a professional photographer, he has enjoyed photographing wild flowers and other natural objects and has participated in slide shows in Italy, Malta, the U.S.A. and various places in Canada. Photos in his first book were taken with a Fujifilm FinePix 9100 or a Canon PowerShot G11.