Born in
Kensington, London in 1909 to Henry and Mildred Cruso, she was raised mostly in Surrey. Her parents were devoted hobby gardeners and passed on a keen interest in gardening and working outdoors to their daughter. She decided to study archaeology after finishing secondary school. Cruso attended the
London School of Economics and finished a qualification in
anthropology in 1931. Cruso then began working at the
Museum of London where she became Assistant to Director
Mortimer Wheeler in the costume collection. She gave lectures in 1933 and 1934 on the evolution of costumes. She led the excavation of an Iron Age hill fort on
Bredon Hill, Worcestershire. In the summer of 1934 she was sent to Ireland to attend a dig there where Cruso met American archaeologist
Hugh O'Neill Hencken. They married in 1935 and Cruso assisted him on the last year of the
Harvard Irish Mission before returning to the
United States with him. They lived in
Boston where they had three daughters. During a visit to the UK, Cruso came up with the idea of a gardening show,
Making Things Grow, which ran on PBS from 1966 to 1969. Cruso also made regular appearances on
The Tonight Show with
Johnny Carson, and followed that with a household show called
Making Things Work. Cruso also wrote multiple books, as well as a column for the
Boston Globe for 22 years. She also wrote for
Country Journal, ''McCall's
and Horticulture''. In her later life she lived in
Marion, Massachusetts. Cruso died in 1997 at the Alzheimer's Center at
Newton-Wellesley Hospital in
Wellesley, Massachusetts. ==Bibliography==