He founded UConn's experimental plant nursery and built a national reputation for cultivation of dwarf conifers from witch's brooms, developing and naming thirty-four distinct cultivars.

He also cultivated Japanese umbrella pines, larches, cinnamon bark maple, hemlocks, and azaleas.

[3] Born in Providence in 1923, Waxman worked as a pipefitter at a shipyard in New London, Connecticut, before enlisting in the U.S. Navy and serving as an aircraft mechanic during World War II.

[4] The Bartlett Arboretum and Gardens holds a small collection of witch's broom donated by Waxman in the early 1980s.

[2] Ten acres on UConn's Plant Science and Education Research Facility, just off Route 195 south of the Storrs campus and adjacent to Waxman's house,[6] hold the largest witch's broom collection of dwarf conifers in North America.