Ted Breaux is not an easy man to befriend.

When he’s not traveling the world to preach the gospel of absinthe or to distill it, the native New Orleanian spends a lot of time at home. For about 10 years, he’s been molding a house in Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, into a space all his own. “Where I choose to live and choose to go are two different things,” he says. “I like suburban life. I like space. I like to get away from people.”

A big part of making his house a home is working in the sloping, wooded 2/3 of an acre back of his house. On a good day, Breaux will move out four to five tons of dirt, all before putting in a workout at the gym. “It’s not the kind of work one wants to do in the summer.” The results are starting to show. So far, he’s cultivated about 100 different types of plants in what he half-jokingly refers to as T.A. Breaux’s Various and Sundry Oddities & Botanical Contradictions. But his goal is to keep around 250 species. The rest, he says, he’ll send to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

He’s got big plans for the plants on his property. When he moved in, a couple of Juniperus virginiana bushes flanked the entrance to his house. Though it’s not the strain most commonly used to make gin (that’s Juniperus communis, or common juniper), it can act in that capacity. Here in the U.S., it’s illegal to distill at home, so Breaux chooses his words carefully to describe his experiments with the juniper.

“As a result of being well-studied in 19th century botanical medicine, I am well versed in the preparation of medical-grade extracts of botanicals for use in spirits and liqueurs,” he says.

Well-versed is a bit of an understatement.