...growing on and on
We collect quotes that have given us the most help or biggest
laugh, and include them in articles here.
Take my last best advice:
Try everything twice!
- Janet Macunovich -
Don't wear perfume in the garden
unless you want to be pollinated by bees.
- Anne Raver -
In his garden every man may be his own
artist without apology or explanation.
- Louise Beebe Wilder -
In this section
are quotes sorted into these illustrated chapters.
Gardeners: Observations on their
nature 
Life philosophies based on gardening
Planting
General garden
care
Weeds
Watering
Fertilizer
Tools
Pruning
Fending off bugs and animals
Storing plants
Working smart
Lawn
Design
Choosing plants
Vegetable gardens
Trees
Wildflowers, native plants
Wildlife attraction, ecology
Amazing facts
Living in the garden
Seasons
Children
The whole collection
Here (below) is the whole collection, sans illustrations. Our
placement of some broad-application quotes was arbitrary, and we
separated the sections to avoid overloading your computer with
their hundreds of illustrations. This text-only collection may help
you as it has us, to find particular quotes more quickly.
If you have favorite quotes that should be included here, email
them to us. We add to this each time we include quotes in articles.
Tell us the source, too. We verify and detail authors and sources
as best we can.
Observations of Gardeners' Nature
Go to the illustrated collection of
Observations
...She knew
things aren't always
and neither are they never...
- Chris Everson, in Untitled
written for Betty Everson -
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of
circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of
attitudes.
- Hugh Downs -
see What's Coming Up #133
"Green fingers" are a fact, and a mystery only to the
unpractised. But green fingers are the extension of a verdant
heart. A good garden cannot be made by somebody who has not
developed the capacity to know and to love growing things.
- Russell Page, in The Education
of a Gardener -
see Growing Concerns #767
Yearning is essential to the garden experience.
- Rand Lee
see What's Coming Up #22
The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies.
- Gertrude Jekyll -
see What's Coming Up #44 and What's Coming Up
#132
The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an
avocation. It becomes an obsession.
- Phyllis McGinley, in The
Province of the Heart -
see Growing Concerns #768
Sometimes I even envy the gardener who inhabits a restricted
plot of ground. It discourages foolishness.
- Roy Barrette -
see What's Coming Up #35
There is no try, only do, or do not.
- Yoda -
see What's Coming Up #53
Only years of practice will teach you the mysteries and bold
certainty of a real gardener, who treads at random, yet tramples on
nothing.
- Karel Capek -
see What's Coming Up #39
Gardening is in large measure a phenomenon of attention.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting Garden
-
see What's Coming Up #76
She was amazing - and I always feel closest to her, and my dad,
when I'm in the garden. Sometimes I think we humans have the
capacity to sense more than we know, but only when we're removed
from the world's distractions. A garden does that.
- Karen Schmidt, Botanical Garden
Society of Northwest Michigan -
see What's Coming Up #90
...the laying out of the spring bulb garden (was) a crucial
operation, carefully charted and full of witchcraft. ...As the
years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet
touching in her bedraggled appearance... her studied absorption in
the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring,
oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly
well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under
those dark skies in the dying October, calmly planning the
resurrection.
- E.B. White, Onward and Upward
in the Garden, 1979 -
Steven sees so much that I walk right past. Sometimes he shows
me pictures of my own gardens and I say "Ooo, where did you take
that?"
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #113
This is gardening, not brain surgery.
- Alan Armitage -
see What's Coming Up #127
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of
the Garden, 1911 -
The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done
something for the good of the whole world.
- Charles Dudley Warner, in My
Summer in a Garden -
see What's Coming Up #153
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in
others belong to us as well.
- Voltaire -
How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It
is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he
has planted.
- Voltaire -
see What's Coming Up #134
There is one thing you will find practically impossible to carry
into your own greenhouse and that is tension.
- Charles H. Potter -
see What's Coming Up #132
There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you
were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them
smiling.
-Mirabel Osler -
In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully
through the bars.
- Alexander Smith -
My good hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I
have less lust to bite my enemies. In smoothing the rough hillocks,
I smooth my temper.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
He's the best physician who knows the worthlessness of the most
medicines.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1733 -
Who has deceived thee so often as thy self?
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1738 -
If you wou'd not be forgotten
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
or do things worth the writing.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1738 -
see What's Coming Up #125
A Plowman on his legs is higher than a Gentleman on his
knees.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1746 -
see What's Coming Up #134
When your garden is finished, I hope it will be more beautiful
than you anticipated, require less care than you had expected, and
have cost only a little more than you had planned.
- Thomas Church -
see What's Coming Up #178
I know of no common interest that exceeds gardening as a source
of lifelong friendships, nor as a means of making new friends
almost constantly.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #125
One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
If I was trying to conceal my lack of skill as a gardener I'd
say these plants (that die in my garden) are short-lived. But it's
not true...
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why
I Grow the Plants I Do -
I used to worry about bulbs... how to stop them from coming up
early. Now, after years of watching I know they're often up several
inches in March, but bloom fine regardless.
- Theresa Bismack -
see What's Coming Up #136
He had heard about talking to plants in the early 70's on radio
4 and thought it an excellent idea. Although, talking is perhaps
the wrong word for what Crowley did.
What he did was put the fear of God into them.
More precisely, the fear of Crowley.
In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick
out a plant that was growing too slowly or succumbing to leaf wilt
or browning or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he
would carry it around to all the other plants. 'Say Good bye to
your friend," he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it..."
Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant and return
an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot which he would
leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.
The plants were the most luxurious, verdant and beautiful in
London. Also, the most terrified."
- Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, in
Good Omens -
Gardens are a form of autobiography.
- Sydney Eddison, in Gardening
for a Lifetime -
see What's Coming Up #148
All gardens are a form of autobiography.
- Robert Dash -
My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made
while learning to see things from the plant's point of view.
- H. Fred Dale -
see What's Coming Up #165
More than anything, I must have flowers, always, always.
- Claude Monet -
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the
earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden... But
though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
- Thomas Jefferson to portrait
painter Charles W. Peale, 1811 -
see What's Coming Up #151
In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from
the land.
- Lyndon B. Johnson -
Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than emperors.
- Mary Cantwell, author, essayist
-
see What's Coming Up #167
Your job as gardener is to keep things running smoothly for the
plants and animals that live in or visit your yard, whatever the
weather decides to do.
- Ruth Shaw Ernst -
see What's Coming Up #164
====================
Life Philosophy Based on Gardening
Go to the illustrated collection of Life
Philosophy
Flowers are words which even a babe may understand.
- Arthur Cleveland Case -
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
- Theodore Roethke -
see What's Coming Up #148
Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread
around encouraging young things to grow.
- Thornton Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #35
The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in
earth and manure.
- D.H. Lawrence -
see What's Coming Up #27
Man masters Nature not by force but by understanding.
- Jacob Bronowski -
Give me a spark of Nature's fire.
That's all the learning I desire.
- Robert Burns -
At the heart of gardening there is a belief in the
miraculous
- Mirabel Osler -
see What's Coming Up #164
Failure is enriching your compost pile.
- Anne Raver -
see What's Coming Up #22
Watching something grow is good for morale. It helps us believe
in life.
- Myron S. Kaufmann, in The
Natural Habitat Garden -
see Growing Concerns #759 and What's Coming Up
#76
We must learn to appreciate the innate wisdom of nature's
chaos.
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #33 and What's Coming Up
#79
Gardens also teach us to live more in the moment - to listen, to
watch, to touch and to dream.
- James van Sweden -
see What's Coming Up #72
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions
nor conflicts.
- Sigmund Freud-
see What's Coming Up #77
February... Now more than ever one must remind oneself that it
is wasteful folly to wish that time would pass, or -- as the
puritanical old saying used to have it -- to kill time until it
kills you.
- Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve
Seasons, 1949 -
Anxious gardeners are always looking over their shoulders.
- Christopher Lloyd -
see What's Coming Up #53
There are far too many self esteem problems in the world as it
is. No sense taking on plant guilt, too.
- Janet Macunovich -
see Growing Concerns #759
Until... some captious imp of a plantling from the High
Sierras... flourishes as if at home in the surroundings you have
made for it with your bungling hands and a prayer in your heart. It
is then that your crushed spirit will lift and soar..."
- Louise Beebe Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #81
The odd thing about common sense is that it isn't very
common.
- Voltaire -
see What's Coming Up #96
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy
than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our
misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us
- Voltaire -
see What's Coming Up #106
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
- Erma Bombeck -
A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a
man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his
whole body to irresistible destruction.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
In spring at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
- Margaret Atwood -
see What's Coming Up #39
Let no one be discouraged by how much there is to learn.
- Gertrude Jekyll -
see What's Coming Up #52
There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
- Mahatma Ghandi-
see What's Coming Up #67
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson -
see What's Coming Up #67
The Golden Age was never the present Age.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack , 1750-
see What's Coming Up #74
What is a butterfly? At best
He's but a caterpillar drest...
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1740 -
see What's Coming Up #99
Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #125
In a well-made garden every day is new.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #85
Strolling with my girlie where the dew is
pearly early in the morning,
Butterflies all flutter up and kiss each
little buttercup at dawning,
If I had Aladdin's lamp for only a day,
I'd make a wish and here's what I'd say:
Nothing could be finer than to be with
Carolina in the morning.
- Song lyrics by Gus Kahn, from
Carolina in the Mornin' -
see What's Coming Up #112
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to
be one.
- Mark Twain -
see What's Coming Up #113
Earth laughs in flowers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
see What's Coming Up #127
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and
the intelligent are full of doubt.
- Bertrand Russell -
(Thanks to Bruce Coppola for calling this quote to the fore.)
Our England is a garden and such gardens are not made
By singing "Oh, how beautiful", and sitting in the shade.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of
the Garden, 1911 -
While working among the little plants of the far places of the
world we forget the narrowness of our own orbit.
- Louise Beebe Wilder, in
Pleasures and Problems of a Rock Garden -
see What's Coming Up #125 and What's Coming Up
#153
Snowdrops: Theirs is a fragile but hardy celebration... in the
very teeth of winter.
- Louise Beebe Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #139
What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner
minds
- Will Rogers -
see What's Coming Up #164
A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.
- Richard Briers -
Nature is always hinting at us.
- Robert Frost -
"It is not enough merely to exist," said he, "I need freedom,
sunshine, and a little flower for a companion."
- Hans Christian Andersen, in The
Butterfly -
see What's Coming Up #167
The cool night air will do me good... I must endure the presence
of two or three caterpillars to become acquainted with the
butterflies... As for the large animals -- I am not at all afraid
of any of them. I have my claws.
- The rose, in her farewell to
The Little Prince -
see What's Coming Up #166
We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly
indifference.
- John W. Gardener -
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
- John W. Gardner in The Pursuit
of Excellence -
see What's Coming Up #174
====================
Planting
Go to the illustrated
collection of Planting quotes
A good gardener always plants three seeds -- one for the bugs,
one for the weather and one for himself.
- Leo Aikman -
see What's Coming Up #44
Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book
not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season
passes away unimproved.
- George Washington -
see What's Coming Up #132
March is excellent for seed-starting if you use grow lights.
Without grow lights, though, wait until April.
- Calvin Bordine, Bordine
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #136
Never plant without a bucket of compost at your side.
- Elsa Bakalar -
see What's Coming Up #88
A change of location when replanting is always beneficial.
- from The Wise Garden
Encyclopedia, editor E.L.D. Seymour, 1936 -
see What's Coming Up #90
Plants need to be moved around. You may have to move them a half
dozen times before you get the position right (or before they give
up the ghost) but that's nothing to be ashamed of.
- Christopher Lloyd, In My Garden,
1994 -
Move those roses as soon as you can dig. They will probably
hardly notice. ...they're a lot tougher than we give them
credit for.
- Nancy Lindley, Great Lakes Roses
-
see What's Coming Up #136
Shrubs transplant well now. Our new shrubs and trees come in
starting in April -- in many cases they were just dug from a field,
the same as transplanting. If the soil is workable, put them in.
Given a month or more of cool weather and good soil moisture,
they'll often out-perform shrubs planted later.
- Ed Allemon, Allemon's
Garden Center -
see What's Coming Up #137
...all who see it say, "Well, you have favorable conditions
here. Everything grows for you." Everything grows for everybody.
Everything dies for everybody, too.
- Henry Mitchell, The Essential
Earthman, 1981 -
====================
General Garden Care
Go to the illustrated
collection of General Garden Care quotes
To-day is Yesterday's Pupil.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1751 -
see What's Coming Up #85
The gardens I love best are those that are still affectionately
tended by the people who own them and who made them -- who planned
and planted and replanned and replanted them, who dug in the dirt
and moved hoses and watched the gardens change with the cycle of
the seasons and over the passage of years.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #76
What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge
in it.
- Charles Dudley Warner, echoing
Henry Beston's Herbs and the Earth -
Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your
back gets used to it.
- Anonymous -
Stop spending so much time figuring a way around the work. You
could have been done with it by now if you'd just gotten to it in
the first place!
- John Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #141
Pray for a good harvest, but continue to hoe
- Old Saying -
see What's Coming Up #164
Weed your own garden first.
- Old Saying -
I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do
for me what I should have done with my own hands.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
see Growing Concerns #761 and What's Coming
Up #163
Plants respond far better to moderate but consistent care than
they do to occasional bouts of heroic intervention.
- Martha Stewart-
see Growing Concerns #758
If you are late with your autumn work, as I invariably am, the
tulip bulbs will not pursue you with reproachful glances.
- Christopher Lloyd -
see What's Coming Up #14
Tim was so learned that he could name a Horse in nine
languages,
So ignorant, that he bought a Cow to ride on.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1750 -
see What's Coming Up #73
====================
Weeds
Go to the illustrated collection
of Weeds quotes
Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
- William Shakespeare -
see What's Coming Up #14 and What's Coming Up
#52
It takes...a lot of weeds in a garden really to keep the
gardener interested. ...God in His wisdom provided thorns and
thistles.
- Bertha Damon, in A Sense of
Humus -
see What's Coming Up #106
Repetitive activities such as weeding might look tedious and
unfulfilling to the uninitiated but they can attain a certain
rhythm, become a... moving meditation.
- Ken Druse, in A Passion For
Gardening -
see Growing Concerns #763 and What's Coming Up
#99
...better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of the
Garden, 1911 -
...weeding is the most peaceful of any outdoor task...
soothingly monotonous but pleasingly varied... shutting out anxious
thinking and furnishing an excuse for not doing some other less
pleasant job.
- Bertha Damon, in A Sense of
Humus -
see What's Coming Up #153
Know your weeds. Because, as the old saying goes:
It is always more powerful to curse it by name.
-Frances Kissinger -
see Growing Concerns #769 and What's Coming Up
#173
The only thing that can make the average gardener industrious,
that can make him come out early and fold up late, is the
industrious weed.
- Bertha Damon, in A Sense of
Humus -
see What's Coming Up #99
Weeding has none of the doubts and fears of transplanting.
- Bertha Damon, in A Sense of
Humus -
see What's Coming Up #110
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been
discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
see Growing Concerns #762, What's Coming Up
#47
and What's Coming Up #100
As the weeder gets acquainted with weeds, he may well take an
example from their virtuous and admirable behavior.
- Bertha Damon, in A Sense of
Humus -
see What's Coming Up #84
Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot
above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in
the dust.
- Henry Thoreau, of weeding in his
Walden bean field -
see What's Coming Up #87
Teasel. Ha. One year you have one; the next year you have
10,000.
- Beaufort Cranford -
Go thou and like an executioner cut off the heads of too fast
growing sprays.
William Shakespeare, in Richard II
-
see What's Coming Up #132
Some plants are real demons, but are so pretty there's a lot of
demand for them. We growers have to carry them. So we sell them
with a warning!
- Karen Bovio -
See Bad luck to say
thanks
Invasive? Sure, it can be. We told you that. But isn't it
otherwise all that you asked for?
- Janet -
See Bad luck to say
thanks
When I had a small yard I had to be so careful of what I let
loose in there. I tell people if someone offers you a perennial,
ask them 'Why?" If they say 'because I have so much of it,' well
there you go, there's your warning!
- Deb Hall -
See Bad luck to say
thanks
====================
Watering
Go to the illustrated collection of Watering
quotes
Overwatering kills more house plants than under watering.
- Roberta M Coughlin -
see What's Coming Up #77
When the well's dry we know the worth of Water.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack -
see What's Coming Up #93
Water is critical as plants start growing. Do check whether
lawn, trees and shrubs need water even before the sprinkler system
is turned on. Don't just feel the surface. Dig down about eight
inches to check if the soil is dry. It's surprising how dry it can
be down deeper where the roots are, even when the surface is
damp.
- Mary Wilson, Michigan State
University Extension -
see What's Coming Up #137
You can use ice cubes set on the soil to water plants, indoors
and out. It's slow release moisture for plants that don't like to
dry down.
- Marge Alpern -
see What's Coming Up #161
...there is nothing more exasperating than a hose that just
isn't long enough.
- Cecil Roberts -
...set the basketball on the kitchen table. Open a cupboard, get
out a bottle of sesame seeds, and place a single seed beside the
basketball. If you were to reduce the Earth to the size of a
basketball, all the fresh surface water on the planet -- all those
rivers and lakes and ponds and streams -- would fit inside that one
tiny sesame seed. Add a second sesame seed; now you have all the
usable underground water as well. Is fresh water a scarce
resource?
- William Ashworth, The Economy of
Nature, 1995 -
====================
Fertilizer
Go to the illustrated
collection of Fertilizer quotes
The farmer's best fertilizer is in his footprint.
- Anonymous -
see What's Coming Up #15
If people want to fertilize early to beef up a thin or pale
lawn, they should use a slow release fertilizer.
- Mary Wilson, Michigan State
University Extension -
see What's Coming Up #137
From a market garden, one would send the cart to town with
produce and it would come back loaded with manure and night soil.
This was an important exchange for both a garden in need of
fertilizer and a town where a large number of horses and other
livestock were housed.
- Royal Horticultural Society
Dictionary of Gardening: Kitchen Garden -
====================
Tools
Go to the illustrated collection
of Tools quotes
Tools of many kinds and well chosen, are one of the joys of a
garden.
- L.H. Bailey, in The
Gardener -
see What's Coming Up #76
A skilled workman may be able to make poor tools do a good job
but he would never consider purchasing such, because no one so well
as he knows the satisfaction and possibilities of owning and using
the best.
- from The Wise Garden
Encyclopedia, editor E.L.D. Seymour, 1936 -
see What's Coming Up #90
Some tools are ancient, some surprisingly modern. In museums we
see Roman spades of heavy iron and wooden, iron-edged medieval
spades along with many forks and hoes. Yet the one-wheeled barrow
was not around until the 1300's and the trowel not for another 300
years.
- Dr. D.G. Hessayon, The Bedside
Book of the Garden, 1988 -
"Your wheelbarrow needs oil, it squeaks!"
"I know. Let it be. It drowns out the creaking of my joints."
- Steven Nikkila -
see What's Coming Up #68
A colorful handle on a tool does nothing for me. Once it drops
into that jungle out there, unless it's absolutely huge, it's gone
until fall.
- Janet Macunovich -
A good tool will... wear out rather than "give out."
- from The Wise Garden
Encyclopedia, editor E.L.D. Seymour, 1936 -
see What's Coming Up #130
A digging fork is a stout, short-handled tool with four
flat tines about a foot long.... for weeding I use it delicately to
nudge the soil loose from roots without breaking them...
- Sara Stein, My Weeds: A
Gardener's Botany, 1988 -
There is great satisfaction in a well-made clean tool that does
its work well.
- L.H. Bailey, in The Gardener
-
see What's Coming Up #128
I don't rely on muscle power to dig, I use a sharp spade and I
wear boots.
- Janet Macunovich -
see Growing Concerns #760
====================
Pruning
Go to the illustrated collection
of Pruning quotes
The tight pruning results in the formation of green meatballs,
cubes, rectangles and other odd shapes.
- Michael A. Dirr -
see What's Coming Up #80
If you cut a shrub back because it's just too big, and it dies,
you haven't lost anything but a plant that couldn't live by your
rules.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #35
If a bush is too big, don't ask "should I?" Go ahead and cut it.
If it lives, great. If it dies, replace it with something better
suited!
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #87 and What's Coming Up
#178
Bushes? Like hair! They grow back. Stop worrying about it!
- Frances Kissinger -
see What's Coming Up #169
They waited until he went out of town and then they thinned the
trees. He didn't notice for nearly a month.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #135
Fewer flowers after you prune hard? Maybe. Temporarily. Small
loss to bear for a big gain in size control!
- Janet Macunovich -
Don't leave that thin, spindly stuff!
- Mr. Kissinger to John Macunovich,
thence to Janet -
See Cut
weak wood hard
Okay, I pruned that rose.
I see. Now go back and prune it more!
- Pro gardeners Mary Wente-Lindsay
and Julia Dingle,
learning each others' pruning technique -
If you can see that it was pruned, you did something wrong.
- Virginia Smith, words from her
grandmother back in the 1920's -
See Proof of gardening at conifer
clip
If you need a saw to prune a tree, you waited too long. Clippers
are always better than a saw.
- Mike Loncar -
See Clippers better than
saw
He carries a knife, curved like a crane's bill and sharpened to
a deadly edge, and this he whips out to prune a dwarf fruit tree in
minutes. "Mind you, don't leave a stump; cut your branch right to
the bone."
- Eleanor Perényi, Green
Thoughts, 1981-
(speaking of the imaginary perfect gardener
in her line-up of unfortunate helpers)
The best pruning is invisible. If what you cut out are bad
branches, no one misses them.
- Virginia Holman -
See Clippers better than saw
====================
Fending off Bugs and Animals
Go to the illustrated
collection of Fending Off quotes
One of the best scarecrows we ever used was a kid's toy duck
with big eyes (eyes seem to have great effect) and a motion
detector that triggered a quack. We stationed it at the base of the
plant we figured was next on the menu.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #141
We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred
slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in
gardening. It makes it so lifelike.
- Evelyn Underhill, theologian and
author -
see What's Coming Up #34
The best gardener is a baby killer. Baby insects are much easier
to kill than adults, and haven't yet developed the big mouths and
voracious appetite of the adolescent.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #95
The families of rabbits or woodchucks will eat the salad greens
just before they are ready to be picked; I plot ways to kill these
animals but can never bring myself to do it...
- Jamaica Kincaid -
The key to good growing, especially to keep problems in check,
is lots of shaking hands with plants. Don't just wave hello to them
from ten feet away. Go touch them, look under a leaf or two, and
notice the small changes that are the first signs of trouble.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #95
It's best to smoosh pine sawflies with rubber gloves.
Their guts eventually soak through cloth. Eww.
- Sonja Nikkila, Lessons from
Childhood Apprenticeship -
See what it's doing -- is it looking at you? That's a predator
insect.
- Dr. David Smitley, Michigan State
University Entomology -
see What's Coming Up #149
On every stem, on every leaf,... and at the root of everything
that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of grub,
caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to
devour that particular part.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes -
see What's Coming Up #129
Plants are the original chemists. Their sophistication makes
DuPont and Monsanto look like little kids with chemistry sets.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #90
Insects leave (Madagascar periwinkle) Catharanthus
roseus out of their diets. So, for that matter, do deer. The
reason is that the plants are loaded with alkaloids so potent that
they are the source of vincristine and vinblastine. These are drugs
important in routines of chemotherapy for treating Hodgkin's
disease and certain forms of leukemia...
- Allen Lacy, in The
Gardener's Eye and Other Essays -
see What's Coming Up #119
Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and
bull-strong.
- Chubb Harper -
see What's Coming Up #178
'What do you do with slugs, Georgie?'
'Pretend you don't see them.'
- E.F. Benson, Lucia in London, 1927
-
Although Helix aspera, the common or garden snail, was
an accidental import, its ravages led to the introduction of that
enthusiastic consumer of slugs and snails -- the hedgehog. -
from A History of Gardening in
New Zealand by Bee Dawson -
'What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you come
from?' the gnat inquired.
'I don't rejoice in insects at all,' Alice explained.
- Lewis Carroll, Through the
Looking-glass -
====================
Storing Plants
Go to the illustrated collection of Storing Plants
quotes
Our Dahlia roots, brought in thoroughly dried sand and
air tight jar, are looking also very sturdy, we are longing to see
them in flower as they were costly roots
- Sarah Low, Dunedin, New Zealand,
1849 -
see What's Coming Up #113
We explored the various branches of the cellar... The root
cellar for the cabbages and squashes laid out on a board, and the
beets and carrots growing whiskery in their box of sand, and the
potatoes with their blind albino tentacles like the legs of crabs.
The cold cellar for the apples in their barrels and the shelves of
preserves...
- Margaret Atwood, in The Blind
Assassin -
The Emigrant's Friend recommended wrapping seeds in
tinfoil (for the long voyage) and then putting them in a barrel
which had been lined with moist sugar, with layers of sugar in
between each lot of seeds. Others swore they got the best results
when they placed their seeds in melted beeswax. Pulpy fruits, such
as currants, gooseberries, mulberries and strawberries, were
squashed between layers of cotton or blotting paper, carefully
dried and then inserted in letters or parcels...
- from A History of Gardening in
New Zealand by Bee Dawson -
====================
Working Smart
Go to the illustrated
collection of Working Smart quotes
Why didn't I do this last fall, when I was younger and in better
shape?
- Curt Pickens -
see What's Coming Up #14
The very best garden is a new one, on virgin ground. Plants leap
out of that spot.
- Janet Macunovich -
Gardeners do first, read later. Why not? Plants are very
gracious in accepting an apology.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #45 and What's Coming Up
#76
I am a great believer in doing a job when I want to do it, and
to hell with the consequences.
- Christopher Lloyd -
see What's Coming Up #178 and What's Coming Up
#183
We've learned over 25 years of interviewing other professional
gardeners, especially in public gardens, that no
one is ever 'all caught up.' Gardeners tell us, 'If only I
had more time!' That's the case no matter how large a staff they
have, how well tended their garden to begin with, or how full-time
they are.
- Janet -
There's no "right way" to garden, only what suits each person
and place.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #53
If someone says "You're not doing that right," hand him the
shovel, sit and watch. That's the right way to garden.
- Janet Macunovich -
see Growing Concerns #758
Untidiness in the garden does not matter as long as the owner
does not mind it.
- Christopher Lloyd
see What's Coming Up #49
There is a time and a place to garden, and a time and a place
simply to let things be.
- Ken Druse -
see What's Coming Up #71
Stay healthy, be safe! A garden is never finished but a gardener
can be.
- Deb Hall -
see What's Coming Up #47
Altho' thy Teacher act not as he preaches,
Yet ne'ertheless, if good, do what he teaches;
Good counsel, failing Men may give; for why,
He that's aground knows where the Shoal doth lie.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1734 -
see What's Coming Up #73
Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1735 -
see What's Coming Up #35
Low care is what we do while on our knees. Smart care is what
makes the growing easier.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #129
If it doesn't grow well, compost it.
- Janet Macunovich -
In addition to all its rich offerings to the body and its five
senses, gardening engages the mind.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #153
We've learned over 25 years of interviewing other professional
gardeners, especially in public gardens, that no one is
ever "all caught up." Gardeners tell us, "If only I had more time!"
That's the case no matter how large a staff they have, how well
tended their garden to begin with, or how full-time they are.
- Janet Macunovich -
Praise the large estate; but cultivate a small one.
- Virgil -
You don't plant a garden, you grow a garden. And be patient.
Give everything a second chance.
- Marge Alpern -
see What's Coming Up #163
====================
Lawn
Go to the illustrated collection of Lawn quotes
"Lawn" is derived from land, Danish; lawn, Welsh; lande,
French
see What's Coming Up
#111
Even a flower gardener who chants "down with lawn" will stop and
smile at that scent of new mown hay.
- Janet -
"Lawn" was defined as 1. An open space between woods.
Johnson's Dictionary,
1755
see What's Coming Up #37
Green is the colour of life.
- Christopher Lloyd -
...crabgrass is aptly descriptive of this hated weed, for it
does scuttle quickly through a lawn.
- Allen Lacy, in The Gardener's
Eye and Other Essays -
...my attempts at a lawn. Twice have we had the ground carefully
dug up, and prepared; twice it has been sown with the best English
seed... at considerable expense; ...and the end of all the trouble
has been that a strong nor'wester has blown away both seed and
soil, leaving only the hard, un-dug ground. ...there are the
croquet things, lying idle in the verandah... they are likely to
remain unused for ever.
- Bee Dawson, in A History of
Gardening in New Zealand -
see What's Coming Up #111
Sure, as garden makers we rip up lots of sod. But as designers
we know nothing else sets off a bed so beautifully as a surrounding
of lush lawn.
- Janet -
====================
Design
Go to the illustrated collection
of Design quotes
The only limit to your garden is the boundaries of your
imagination.
- Thomas D Church, landscape
architect -
see Growing Concerns #754 and What's Coming Up
#151
In his garden every man may be his own artist without apology or
explanation.
- Louise Beebe Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #22
The most serious gardening I do would seem very strange to an
onlooker, for it involves hours of walking round in circles,
apparently doing nothing.
- Helen Dillon -
see What's Coming Up #76
One of the most important things a gardener does is look. The
rewards are immeasurable.
- Elsa Bakalar -
see What's Coming Up #164
A garden should have no beginning and no end. And should be
pleasing when seen from any angle, not only from the house.
- Thomas Church -
Don't design your back yard from the outside looking in. Design
from your window looking out.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #15, What's Coming Up
#46
and What's Coming Up #142
What happens in the way of a garden opportunity between the door
of your car and the door of the house... is where garden magic
first comes into play.
- William H. Frederick, Jr., in
The Exuberant Garden -
see What's Coming Up #93
Gardeners in regions with very long summer days have a
great opportunity, and should use more of the cool colors that
literally glow in the low light of morning and evening.
- Janet Macunovich, in the
talk, Local Color -
see What's Coming Up #104
Given the right circumstances, I believe every colour can be
successfully used with any other and that is the message I wish to
convey.
- Christopher Lloyd -
If you have a dog, watch where it walks. It will define a
path for you.
- Ken Druse -
Be pleased with your real garden, don't pursue the perfection of
a picture. What you see in a photo lasted only as long as the
shutter snap.
- Janet Macunovich -
Watch out for trees and traffic.
The change is slow, the impact great, yet we miss the one and
mistake the other.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #34
..the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the
plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not
make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants,
the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite
intention.
- Gertrude Jekyll, Wood and
Garden, 1899 -
There is no "The End" to be written, neither can you, like an
architect, engrave in stone the day the garden was finished; a
painter can frame his picture, a composer notate his coda, but a
garden is always on the move.
- Mirabel Osler -
see What's Coming Up #47
Reducing the size of the garden when the time is right will
never reduce the size of the gardener's heart.
- Deb Hall -
see What's Coming Up #47
To the landscape architect a rock garden... appears... the work
of a lunatic.
- Louise Beebe Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #81
We all have a good idea of what an English garden looks like, as
well as a Japanese garden, even a French parterre garden,
Italianate garden, etc. But what is the American garden? Lawn and
tomatoes!
-Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #84
A garden is not a picture, but a language.
- Henry Mitchell -
...my own preference is for mixed (beds) where there are
...groups of larger shrubs on corners and elsewhere to give shape
to the views and to create surprises.
- Graham Stuart Thomas, in
Perennial Garden Plants -
History is everything in gardening: With a site, weather, a
particular plant. It solves mysteries. And it's why, when others
say, "You can't do that!" you can know with deepest certainty that
you can.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #152
For the best building and planting...the architect and gardener
must have some knowledge of each other's business, and each must
regard with feelings of kindly reverence the unknown domains of the
other's higher knowledge.
- Gertrude Jekyll -
Plan your garden on paper. Mistakes made on paper won't cost you
much in time or money.
- Elsa Bakalar, in A Garden of
One's Own -
Gardeners often focus exclusively on plants, missing the
absolutely essential visual role played by structures, from paths
to pavilions.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #174
If you like it in March, it's a keeper. Build on it!
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #174
When many plants are out of the picture in winter, it becomes
clear that many of them should be pitched out. It's also much
easier to do that before they come up and begin to talk to
us.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #174
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and
the eyes will take care of themselves.
- Robert Louis Stevenson -
====================
Choosing Plants
Go to the illustrated
collection of Choosing Plants quotes
As a botanist who's a gardener, I think if a plant's interesting
from a botanical point of view it doesn't matter how ugly it
is.
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why I Grow
the Plants I Do -
see What's Coming Up #123
Please don't ask for a groundcover suggestion now, then curse me
later for recommending an invasive plant! As they say "You knew it
was a snake..."
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #37
Most of my garden contains ignorant
plants. Fortunately since they cannot read the books, they do not
know they shouldn't be able to exist in my garden.
- Dennis Groh -
see More new perennials
You don't know the plant until you've killed it. Then you've
learned something.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #37 and What's Coming Up
#167
I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself.
- J.C. Raulston, paraphrasing Sir
Peter Smithers -
see What's Coming Up #71
We think we learn by growing a plant but we can't know if it's
just surviving or truly living? We really don't know anything about
a plant until we kill it.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #51
I've killed quite a few of them now, some of them in some
spectacular ways. ...The real trick with these tough plants is to
get a picture of it before it dies.
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why I Grow
the Plants I Do -
see What's Coming Up #110
Some people think that yuccas are wonderful, and others think
they are aptly named.
- Steven Nikkila -
see What's Coming Up #112
I have pinched cuttings to which I had no right myself, and I
can remember most such occasions with more glee than shame.
- Christopher Lloyd, In My
Garden, 1994 -
While working among the little plants of the far places of the
world we forget the narrowness of our own orbit.
- Louise Beebe Wilder, in
Pleasures and Problems of a Rock Garden -
see What's Coming Up #125 and What's Coming Up
#153
I cannot walk into our garden without constantly being reminded
of the friends who have shared their plants.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
There are some advantages to growing oddball plants. One is I
can be much more cavalier about weeds -- because no one is going to
be able to tell which are weeds. If I haven't weeded and people are
coming I can just get out labels and label things...
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why I Grow
the Plants I Do -
see What's Coming Up #80
Whether the are splashed with gold or white, striped with
chartreuse or cream, or margined in light tones, they are nature's
weaklings, and nature is still a matter of survival of the fittest.
The survival of variegated plants depends on human
intervention.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
Interspersed in lawn and opening glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each others' shades.
- Alexander Pope -
see What's Coming Up #79
When in doubt about a plant, move it.
- Helen Dillon -
see What's Coming Up #13 and What's Coming
Up #166
It is far better to limit our choice to real permanencies, which
do not require staking... and a general mixture throughout of dwarf
shrubs, perennials and ground-covers, with bulbs... This has been
called gardening in four layers, and I believe it to be the most
satisfying form of gardening.
- Graham Stuart Thomas, in
Perennial Garden Plants -
see What's Coming Up #60
Happiness comes from growing what thrives, not merely
survives.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #51
The essence of the enjoyment of a garden is that things should
look as though they like to grow in it.
- Beatrix Farrand -
When I need to be precise about a plant, I use its Latin name,
even if my nongardening friends sometimes look at me a little funny
for using big words in a dead language -- or in the kind of
horticultural Esperanto that botanical names make up.
- Allen Lacy, in The Gardener's
Eye and Other Essays -
see What's Coming Up #120
If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is
lost, too.
- Carl Linnaeus -
see What's Coming Up #111
Anyone starting to garden... would be wise to look around
carefully and see what grows well in other people's yards.
- Thalasso Cruso, in Making
Things Grow Outdoors -
see What's Coming Up #156
Some of these odd, ugly plants are long lived. Which is good -
it adjusts your sense of beauty.
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why I Grow
the Plants I Do -
Once you start thinking "oddball" plants are worth growing, the
doors just open... the list of 'must haves' keeps getting
bigger.
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why I Grow
the Plants I Do -
see What's Coming Up #152
As a collector, I want one of everything. I say, grow things in
drifts of one.
- Tony Avent, Plant
Delights Nursery -
And the best-laid plans are often confounded by plants imbued
with such uncontrollable wanderlust that they have no intention of
staying where you put them...
- Helen Dillon, in Garden
Artistry -
see What's Coming Up #74
Take care with manufactured chemicals, certainly. Your safety
and long term health are more important than anything. Yet don't
forget that if you grow even a dozen different plants, you are
surrounded by chemistry. Inside their cells even the most ordinary
plants creates potent fungicides, insecticides, irritants, balms,
hallucinogens, sedatives, nerve toxins, cell repair stimulants,
lures, repellents... you name it. Treat all plants with
respect!
- Janet Macunovich -
Snowdrops: Theirs is a fragile but hardy celebration... in the
very teeth of winter.
- Louise Beebe Wilder -
see What's Coming Up #139
Take the Gesneriads. So far I've figured out how to kill
substantial numbers of them. But I keep trying since I do keep
learning something each time. So I have high hopes.
- Tony Reznicek, in the talk Why I Grow
the Plants I Do -
see What's Coming Up #81
Some tulips last so long you could almost dust them off, and
others you can't trust over night.
- Constance Spry -
see What's Coming Up #88
Flowering crabapples and lilacs actually grow better in the
North than in other parts of the continent.
- Leon Snyder, in Trees and
Shrubs for Northern Gardens -
see What's Coming Up #71
"Herbes... comfort the wearied braine with fragrant smells which
yielde a certaine kind of nourishment.
- William Coles, 1656 -
see What's Coming Up #76
(Heliotrope), the smell rewards the care.
- Thomas Jefferson, in instructions
accompanying a gift of seeds to a grandson -
see What's Coming Up #92
Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII of France, had such an
aversion to roses that she could not stand seeing one even in a
painting.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #91
Juniperus chinensis 'Pfitzeriana'... The granddaddy of
juniper cultivars; ...usually listed as growing about 5' high and
10' wide, actually can grow larger...
- Michael Dirr -
see What's Coming Up #156
It's bad luck to say 'Thank you' for a plant.
Better to say, 'I'll think of you when I see it.'
- Common saying, unknown
origin-
See Bad luckto say
thanks
====================
Vegetable Gardens
Go to the illustrated
collection of Vegetable Gardens quotes
Not knowing where your food comes from is a primary form of
alienation.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
A garden... is a finite place the gardener... has created,
working on it with or against nature, a plot whose intention it is
to provide pleasure; possibly in the form of beauty, possibly in
the form of cabbages -- and possibly, beautiful cabbages.
- Abby Adams, The Gardener's
Gripe Book, 1995 -
The first gathering of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel
like a mother about her baby -- how could anything so beautiful be
mine?
- Alice B. Toklas -
For those dependent on their gardens for fresh food, it was
often a case of feast or famine... (One settler wrote),
"Strawberries were now so plentiful that... I made 287 lbs of
jam..."
- Bee Dawson, in A History of
Gardening in New Zealand -
Men & melons are hard to know.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1733 -
see What's Coming Up #152
Snowy winter, a plentiful harvest.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1733 -
see What's Coming Up #129
Another spring excitement in the garden is the pea planting...
about the first or second day of April, as soon as the top of the
soil can be worked with a fork, and long before the plowing.
How we watch those rows for the first sprouts! How we coddle and
cultivate them! How eagerly we inspect our neighbors' rows, trying
to appear nonchalant! And doubtless how silly this sounds to anyone
who is not a gardener! Last summer we got our first mess of peas on
June twenty-first, and after eating a handful we rushed to the
telephone, and were about to ring, when somebody called us.
"Hello," we said into the receiver.
A voice on the other end of the wire, curiously choked and
monchy, cried, "We are eating our first peas! My mouth's full of
'em now!"
"That's nothing," we answered, "we've got our first mouthful all
swallowed."
- Walter Prichard Eaton, in The
Once and Future Gardener -
see What's Coming Up #82
Only two things that money can't buy, and that's true love and
homegrown tomatoes.
- Guy Clark, in his song
Homegrown Tomatoes -
see What's Coming Up #106
Up in the mornin' out in the garden,
Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one.
Plant `em in the spring, eat `em in the summer:
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer...
Homegrown tomatoes!
- Guy Clark, in his song
Homegrown Tomatoes -
see What's Coming Up #135
Take two quinces, and two or three burre roots and a Potaton,
and pare youre Potaton and scrape your roots, and put them into a
quart of wine, and let them boyle till they bee tender, and put in
an ounce of dates, and when they be boiled tender, drawe them
through a strainer, wine and all, and then put in the yolkes
of eight eggs, and the braynes of three or four cocke-sparrowes,
and straine them into the other, and a little rosewater, and seeth
them all with sugar, cinnamon and ginger, and cloves and mace; and
put in a little sweet butter, and set it upon a chafing-dish of
coles between two platters, to let it boyle till it be something
bigge.
- Good Housewife's Jewel
(1596), when potatoes were new to Europe -
see What's Coming Up #133
Even where the land was more receptive, settlers soon learned to
take some precautions before planting their vegetables. Maize and
pumpkin seeds were soaked in water for several days and then
blackened with tar before planting -- the most effective way to
deter rats, mice and birds.
- Bee Dawson, in A History of
Gardening in New Zealand -
see What's Coming Up #142
The farmers loved her bees, thanks to all the pollinating they
did, how they made the watermelons redder and the cucumbers
bigger.
- Sue Monk Kidd, in The Secret
Life of Bees -
The next time you think about falling fruits or nuts as messy,
consider this conversation between John Macunovich and cousins
visiting from a very poor town in Beylorus (Russia).
"What do you do with the apples?"
"We rake them up and compost them."
"What?!"
see What's Coming Up
#157
The farmers loved her bees, thanks to all the pollinating they
did, how they made the watermelons redder and the cucumbers
bigger.
From the novel The Secret Life of
Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
- Michel de Montaigne -
====================
Trees
Go to the illustrated collection
of Trees quotes
Any fool can destroy trees, they cannot run away.
- John Muir -
see What's Coming Up #49 and What's Coming Up
#152
In a tree... anchoring roots... are most developed opposite to
the prevailing winds, ...and its strength is related to the wind
pressure which it must needs withstand.
- D'Arcy Thomas, in On Growth and
Form -
see What's Coming Up #88
Happy the Man...
Whose trees in summer yield him Shade
In Winter Fire
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1744 -
see What's Coming Up # 152
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree...
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
- Joyce Kilmer, in Trees
-
see What's Coming Up #152
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
- Ogden Nash, in Song of the Open
Road -
see What's Coming Up #153
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.
- George Pope Morris, in Woodman
Spare That Tree -
It is a simple matter to plant trees in straight lines, but
informal groupings will test the sensitivities of the most
experienced planter and the smaller the groups the more difficult
they are to place.
- Graham Stuart Thomas, in Great
Gardens of Britain -
If a tree dies, plant another in its place.
- Carl Linnaeus -
see What's Coming Up #164
On either side of the front walk there towered two
old horse-chestnut trees. I loved their sticky,
unfurling leaves, and when they bore their candles
it was magic, breath-catching, eye-delighting. Cut
down, cut down. What kind of man cuts down trees
that took all those years to grow? I do not
understand.
- from the poem Horse-Chestnut
Trees and Roses by James Schuyler -
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of
others only a green thing which stands in the way.
- William Blake -
...Cinderella at the ball, the common mulberry, so drab and
unappreciated the remainder of the year, suddenly (briefly) glows
brilliant yellow, a beacon of splendor.
- Carol Bishop Hipps, In a
Southern Garden, 1994 -
====================
Wildflowers and Native Plants
Go to the
illustrated collection of Wildflowers and Native Plants
quotes
The beauty of woodland wildflowers is that they exist at
all.
- Roger Swain -
see What's Coming Up #88
Growing a natural habitat garden is also one of the most
important things each of us can do to help restore a little order
to a disordered world.
- Ken Druse -
see What's Coming Up #53
The garden is like a hospital: All the plants are on
intensive care. Watering, mulching, fertilizing, maybe even someone
chopping off their little dead heads. In a prairie garden or
meadow, the plants are fully capable of fending for themselves.
They require no fertilizers, watering, or special care, as long as
one has selected native plants to match their soil and sunlight
conditions.
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #101
'Tis a strange Forest that has no rotten Wood in it...
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1747 -
see What's Coming Up #89
There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk
cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the
ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel
that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is
simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.
- Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve
Seasons, 1949 -
Wood's not natural mulch for a woodland garden. Do you see
forest trees shatter into a zillion pieces and fall? No. They fall,
then decompose, then spread.
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #141
Nature's mighty law is change.
- Robert Burns -
see What's Coming Up #184
With names like butterflyweed, milkweed, ironweed, and Joe Pye
Weed, you can be sure these plants were not named by a marketing
person.
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #95 and What's Coming Up
#100
The big break for prairie plants was when Purple Coneflower went
from being a 'Wildflower' to a 'Perennial.' It's our Jackie
Robinson!
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #100
Be careful when burning prairie gardens and meadows near
buildings. Got any idea what the melting point of vinyl siding
might be? I do, because it melted it on my office! The fire
was 40 feet away and under control, but a big gust of wind blew hot
air toward the building, and the next thing I knew the siding was
hanging down off the walls. So be careful out there!
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #138
The average prairie plant has about 2/3 of its living biomass
underground in the roots. This storehouse of water and nutrients is
like money in the bank for hard times. Obviously, these are
Republican plants!
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #104
====================
Wildlife Attraction, Ecology
Go to the illustrated collection of Wildlife
and Ecology quotes
I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongue.
- The Lorax, a Dr Seuss character
-
But there is one place where a person can make choices that will
lead in a small way toward greater sanity in dealing with the
natural order. That place is the private garden.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #92
If you want birds in your garden, you gotta have bugs for them
to eat. No bugs, no birds. I know my garden is a success when I see
holes in the leaves of the plants, because I know I'm feeding the
birds.
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
see What's Coming Up #95
Never give up listening to the sounds of birds.
- John James Audubon -
Everybody says they love Nature, but nobody ever invites her
over to their yard. We mow plant life to within an inch or
two of it's life, relentlessly spray toxic chemicals to kill all
the bugs, be they good or bad, and then wonder where all the birds
went.
- Neil Diboll, Prairie
Nursery -
We can plant to suit the needs of the birds and other wildlife
that find a haven and a habitat on our home ground, and we can
understand that to do so is a moral dictate, not a personal
whim.
- Allen Lacy, in The
Inviting Garden -
see What's Coming Up #165
History is rich with tales of the disastrous outcomes of some
intentional introductions...
- IUCN The World Conservation
Union-
see What's Coming Up #180
Not all introductions worked well. Rabbits were an unmitigated
environmental disaster. Unchecked by any natural predator, they
bred at a staggering rate and chewed their way across vast areas of
pastureland as well as any garden that came their way. Attempts to
control them by introducing ferrets, weasels and stoats did much
more harm than good. Although these predators probably killed a
reasonable number of rabbits, they also devastated populations of
kiwi and raided the nests of flighted birds.
- Bee Dawson, in A History of
Gardening in New Zealand -
see What's Coming Up #138
When possums were introduced in 1837 to start a fur industry, no
one predicted that these Australian neighbours would naturalize
with destructive enthusiasm, wreaking havoc on gardens and bush
alike. Up to 20 million possums a year were killed during the
height of the fur trade, but this barely checked their rapid
expansion.
- Bee Dawson, in A History of
Gardening in New Zealand -
see What's Coming Up #113
(Send) leafy, leafy collard greens
And please make sure they're washed!
Light up our
eyes
Brighten our
lives
With ten banana squash.
Turtle grocery list - William 'Bud'
Luckey -
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay
our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect's view of
its plain.
- Henry David Thoreau -
====================
Amazing Facts
Go to the illustrated collection of Amazing
Facts quotes
Medical research shows that simply looking at a garden is good
for our health.
- Ken Druse -
see What's Coming Up #54
A medium sized tree can move more than 500 gallons of water into
the air on a hot day.
- Ken Druse -
see What's Coming Up #35 and
- U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency -
seeWringing Water From
Trees
see What's Coming Up #82
Violets' scent caused a singer to lose her voice.
- From Scented Flora of the
World -
see What's Coming Up #91
We blame Walt Disney for goldenrod's undeserved bad name.
Despite Sneezy's pronouncement, plants such as goldenrod with
heavy, insect-carried pollen rarely cause allergic reaction.
- Janet Macunovich -
see Growing Concerns #255
We've heard that a first class head gardener requires longer
training than a surgeon or lawyer. Not surprising, since the
surgeon or lawyer are working with just one species. The gardener
tends hundreds of different plant species and must know the ins and
outs of many animal species, too.
- Janet -
The first dahlia tubers sent to Europe from the New World were
for eating and not for growing in the flower garden.
- Dr. D.G. Hessayon, The Bedside
Book of the Garden, 1988 -
====================
Living in the garden
Go to the
illustrated collection of Living in the Garden quotes
I have heard people say, "I garden in lieu of therapy, but
therapy would be cheaper." I believe gardening's worth the price
since it's at least as effective in curing head and heart of what
ails us.
- Janet Macunovich -
ee What's Coming Up #109
In my garden, after a rainfall, you can faintly, yes, hear the
breaking of new blooms.
-Truman Capote -
...a garden is mainly ...a space around which interests can be
accumulated.
- Graham Stuart Thomas, in
Perennial Garden Plants -
see What's Coming Up #65
...the flowers... Those beautiful creatures that catch the smile
of God out of the sky and preserve it.
Mark Twain, in The
Diaries of Adam and Eve
We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy
parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft
as the inside of an elbow.
- Margaret Atwood, in The Blind
Assassin -
Don't wear perfume in the garden unless you want to be
pollinated by bees.
- Anne Raver -
Don't hesitate to put in a plant that you greatly admire simply
because it is supposed to be difficult to grow... The best
gardening is experimental as well as ephemeral.
- Christopher Lloyd -
see What's Coming Up #169
Take my last best advice: Try everything twice!
- Janet Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up #62
More than half a century has passed, and yet each spring, when I
wander into the primrose wood, I see the pale yellow blooms and
smell their sweetest scent -- for a moment I am seven years old
again and wandering in that fragrant wood.
- Gertrude Jekyll -
Love your neighbour, yet don't pull down your hedge.
- Benjamin Franklin, in Poor
Richard's Almanack, 1754 -
see What's Coming Up #87
Silly gardeners! We buy pretty, comfortable benches and position
them oh so carefully. But does the gardener ever sit? No! We perch
momentarily and then jump up to do that next thing we see.
- Janet Macunovich -
I cannot walk into our garden without constantly being reminded
of the friends who have shared their plants.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
It's my hobby, my vocation, my passion... it may as well be my
religion, too.
- Janet Macunovich -
A single painted gnome sends out a message we think we can read
and either tolerate or ridicule. If your immediate reaction is a
patronizing dismissal of both gnome and owner, you had better
examine very carefully your own trash-filled life.
- Geoffrey B. Charlesworth, The
Opinionated Gardener, 1988 -
...I make it a point of honour to have a couple of gnomes in my
garden as silent testimony to the right of gnome-lovers everywhere
to do their own thing without fear of snide remarks.
- Richard Briers, A Little Light
Weeding, 1999 -
Those who stay indoors until the golden flames of forsythia
announce to all that spring is here will miss the first
crocus...
- Elizabeth Lawrence, The Home
Garden, 1943 -
====================
Seasons
Go to the illustrated collection
of Seasons quotes
Are the trees starting to bud or am I
imagining things? And, no, I haven't been drinking when I noticed
this.
- Joe Kuskowski, February Rambles
-
There is always in February some one
day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming,
summer.
- Gertrude Jekyll -
First an artist, Jekyll moved into garden design
as her eyesight failed. We may owe our inheritance
of Jekyll innovations to the extra sensory appeal of spring.
(Thanks to Carol Mousigian for calling this quote to the
fore.)
The most serious charge which can be brought against New England
is not Puritanism but February. ... Spring is too far away to
comfort by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of
novelty.
- Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve
Seasons, 1949 -
Bless that good ol' Equinox -- the
plants have come to life again. It's so nice to watch them all
turning toward the sun at their summertime rate (rather than therir
slow weak winter wobblings) -- a reminder that we're all stretching
for the light again.
- Sonja Nikkila -
See What's Coming Up #198, Spring Acceleration
Gardening is the most ephemeral art. A garden is in constant
flux, season to season and moment to moment.
- Will & Ariel Durant, founders
of Smith & Hawken -
see What's Coming Up #110
Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to
my garden. It is sad that Nature will play such tricks with us poor
mortals.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne -
A year without its winter would seem all wrong to me... It is a
necessity, not just a necessary evil.
- Christopher Lloyd -
see What's Coming Up #71
A garden in winter is the absolute test of the true
gardener.
- Rosemary Verey, in The Garden
in Winter -
see What's Coming Up #71
It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a
curious transfusion of courage.
- Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County
Almanac -
see What's Coming Up #72
Winter's palette is clear and spare, restrictive enough to curb
the excesses of even the most daring gardeners.
- Rosemary Verey, in The Garden
in Winter -
see What's Coming Up #72
I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as
autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all
the daylight hours in the open air.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne -
see What's Coming Up #161
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a
bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive
autumns.
- George Eliot -
see What's Coming Up #161
Don't worry, it always comes. Call it Indian summer or whatever.
There are always a few days of beautiful weather
after Veteran's Day.
- Marya Macunovich -
see What's Coming Up 163
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur
more frequently in memory than in life.
- P. D. James -
see What's Coming Up #170
There is always in February some one day, at least, when one
smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer.
- Gertrude Jekyll -
see Houseplants' Spring Revival in What's Coming
Up #198
Bless that good ol' Equinox -- the plants have come to life
again. It's so nice to watch them all turning toward the sun at
their summertime rate (rather than their slow weak winter
wobblings) -- a reminder that we're all stretching for the light
again.
- Sonja Nikkila -
see Houseplants' Spring Revival in What's Coming
Up #198
====================
Children
Go to the illustrated
collection of quotes about Children in gardens
Laura and I picked milkweed pods and opened them to feel the
scale-shaped seeds overlapping like the skin of a dragon.
Margaret Atwood, in The Blind
Assassin -
see What's Coming Up #135
Gardening is restorative. It brings us back to the things we
thought we had lost in childhood. It brings us back to our senses
-- to the downy feel of the leaves of silver sage; to the perfume
of jasmine and gardenias; to the taste of spearmint; to the sound
of bamboo rustling in the sudden rush of wind before a storm; to
the cool white beauty of a moonflower unfolding as dusk turns to
night.
- Allen Lacy, in The Inviting
Garden -
see What's Coming Up #83
...there are some notable differences between those of us who
started gardening when we were children and our brothers and
sisters of the spade who came to the pursuit later in life -- the
late bloomers, so to speak. ...They are serious gardeners... as for
the rest of us, we started out as children and something of the
child remains in us. Gardening may be work but it begins as play --
something spontaneous, with no restrictive rules.
- Allen Lacy, in The Gardener's
Eye and Other Essays -
see What's Coming Up #89
Another remnant of childhood to which I confess is a yen for
plants that serious gardeners hold in low account, especially gaudy
ones that lack a shred of pretence to modesty...
- Allen Lacy, in The Gardener's
Eye and Other Essays -
see What's Coming Up #74
There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as
thrilling as gathering vegetables one has grown.
- Alice B. Toklas -
(Caterpillars) have most wonderful appetites and hardly stop
feeding all day long... they grow very quickly; and in a few days
time they find their jackets are much too tight for them. Then a
most curious thing happens. Their skins split right down the back,
and they wriggle and twist about... till at last they manage to
creep out of them altogether and appear in new ones, which had been
gradually forming underneath the old!
Wouldn't it be nice if we could get new suits of clothes, or new
frocks, as easily as this?
- Theodore Wood, Butterflies and
Moths Shown to Children -
Don't know why you feel compelled to
do a thing a certain way? Bet you saw someone doing it just that
way when you were two.
- Janet -