40 quotes found
“By bringing a soulful consciousness to gardening sacred space can be created outdoors.”
“Regardless of geographical region or culture gardening is perhaps the most common and shared experience of Nature.”
“Were all given gifts in life, its what we do with them that shows us what weve learned.”
“Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness.”
“In Summer there were white and damask roses, and the smell of thyme and musk. In Spring there were green gooseberries and throstles [thrush], and the flowers they call ceninen [daffodils]. And leek...”
“The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is ...”
“...Want to knowwhy my roses grow dead ona living vine? Prayer against civil war. Letus hate with a single heart. Don'tdrink the runoff. I always wanted a ruinso I bought a run-'er-down. Lovecontami...”
“Soap wasn't invented until the Romans, who also invented interesting sex. (Since my editor informs me that a gardening book is not a proper venue for discussions of interesting sex, I will go into ...”
“We gardeners are healthy, joyous, natural creatures. We are practical, patient, optimistic. We declare our optimism every year, every season, with every act of planting.”
“Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting...”
“If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. 'Green fingers' are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the exten...”
“Oh, my child, can you not see? You must let go of yourself. For if a seed wishes to live, it must sacrifice itself and grow outward, not inward.”
“Garden design is all about concealment and surprise.”
“But gardening is none of that, really. Strip away the gadgets and the techniques, the books and the magazines and the soil test kits, and what you're left with, at the end of the day, is this: a st...”
“There is a tale...It tells of the days when a blight hung over our land. Nothing prospered. Nothing flourished. Not even zucchini would grow.”
“But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.”
“As I leave the gardenI take with me a renewed view,And a quiet soul.”
“The moment you step into a garden and begin to cultivate and prune, you become a killer.”
“She was a gardener of the ruthless type, and went for any small green thing that incautiously showed a timid spike above the earth, suspecting it of being a weed. She had had a slight difference wi...”
“Water will, increasingly, be detained, stored and then recycled or infiltrated in gardens.”
