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...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 the extension of a
verdant heart.
- 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... I always feel
closest to her, and my dad, when I'm in the garden. ...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, of the Botanical
Garden Society of Northwest Michigan -
see What's
Coming Up #90
We play for
immortality with every seedling and new plant.
...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 -
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 -
Volunteer gardeners do indeed make the world better, and
they are appreciated! Paul Needle, Phil Gigliotti and
Gordon Findlay at the Detroit Zoo.
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
Would this
bearded iris (above), 'Festiva Maxima' peony (below)
and toadlily (Tricyrtis, below right) fit the
bill, Claude?
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