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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
Below: Foxtail lily, Eremerus 'Spring Valley',
hardy to zone 5 if the drainage is good.
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
It's
illegal, taboo and not nice to nip pieces from the
plants we covet at botanical gardens, pocket
them,
then stick them in moist sand when we get home.
Yet wonderfully funny stories are told about plant
theft
escapades of the world's first-tier
gardeners.
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,
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 -
Right: Flowers of purple locust, Robinia
hispida.
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
Beautiful weaklings:
Variegated Hydrangea macrophylla and elderberry
(Sambucus nigra 'Madonna')
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 -
For all its cussed energy, the
white leaf Lamium maculatum would be bested by its all-green
kin.
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
Gardeners fear to move
precious plants, and so thereby that the poorly placed tree peony,
bleeding heart or other "resents disturbance" plant they treasure
will never grow well at all. Too bad -- they could be
moved!
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 -
Mountain laurel
(Kalmia latifolia) can be so beautiful, but rarely looks
happy in the hot summer, dry air winter and alkaline soil of the
Midwest. So, why bother?!
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
Right: Bell balm,
Monarda didyma, queen of wanderlust.
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-