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The only limit to your garden is the
boundaries of your imagination.
- Thomas 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 -
Watch out for trees and traffic.
The change is slow, the impact great, yet we miss the one and
mistake the other.
- Janet -
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 -
The Arnold Arboretum shrub collection comes pretty
close to disproving Jekyll, showcasing one each of dozens of plants
but creating a pleasing overall, too.
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 -
Witchhazel flowers are small but their light sweet scent is a huge
lift to the gardener loathe to end the year in fall (Hamamelis
virginiana) or eager to begin in late winter (spring
blooming H. vernalis and hybrids H. x
mollis).
.