Joan Manley (b. 1933) and
Jane Stroup (b. 1920)
In the 1960s, Joan Manley met David Carson, head groundskeeper for Walter Beinecke Jr.'s Sherburne Associates, at the A&P. A fellow horticulture student, David hired Joan to help maintain the Sherburne properties and to work in the gardens on Candlehouse Lane, a property owned by Beinecke. When David left the island in the 1980s, Joan and her companion Jane Stroup, bought the house and gardens and founded a business they called Garden of the Sea. Jane is an accomplished sculptor active in the Artists Association of Nantucket. In the 1970s, she and her brother Jon, a painter, showed together in the Little Gallery. She also served for twenty-five years as librarian of the Maria Mitchell Science Library. When the muse moved her, she wrote her annual reports in iambic pentameter.

The embroidered narrative shows Garden of the Sea on Candlehouse Lane. Joan is the head gardener, and loves watering (the green hose), while Jane likes "patrol" duties, such as deadheading the flowers.