"As the bio-centric view suggests, the garden prospers when control is balanced by equal measures of humility and benevolence. A balance is struck. Control, servitude, respect, imagination, pragmatism, an ecological conscience, compliance, and a certain measure of mysticism and altruism all meld together to provide nurturance. Try to separate the various aspects into their constituent parts - grant any one of them the status of fundamental gardening definition and one soon skews the entire process. Put them back together again in the service of the two-way street called nurturance, and we express the state of grace called gardening."
~ Jim Nollman
from Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place.
The morrow was a bright September morn;
The earth was beautiful as if newborn;
There was nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,
Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Just after the death of the flowers,
And before they are buried in snow,
There comes a festival season
When Nature is all aglow.
Source: Author Unknown
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather
And autumn's best of cheer.
Helen Hunt Jackson
"When I reflect that one man, armed only with his own physical and moral resources, was able to cause this land of Canaan to spring from the wasteland, I am convinced that in spite of everything, humanity is admirable. But when I compute the unfailing greatness of spirit and the tenacity of benevolence that it must have taken to achieve this result, I am taken with an immense respect for that old and unlearned peasant who was able to complete a work worthy of God. [A heartwarming story about the impact of one man, Elzeard Bonfire, who planted trees from 1900-1946, in the area where the Alps thrust down into Province, France.]"
~ Jean Goon from The Man Who Planted Trees.
"I shall only instance in one delight more, the most natural and
best-natured of all others, a perpetual companion of the husbandman; and that is, the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but the effects and improvements of his own art and diligence; to be always gathering of some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others ripening, and others budding: to see all his fields and gardens covered with the beauteous creatures of his own industry; and to see, like God, that all his works are good."
- Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), “Of Agriculture”, 1650
A Week in the life of a Gardener's Spouse
Author unknown
She dug the plot on Monday-
The soil was rich and fine,
She forgot to thaw out dinner-
So we went out to dine...
She planted roses Tuesday-
She says they are a must,
They really are quite lovely,
But she forgot to dust...
On Wednesday it was daisies-
They opened up with the sun,
All whites and pinks and yellows-
But the laundry wasn't done...
The poppies came on Thursday-
A bright and cheery red,
I guess she really was engrossed-
She never made the bed...
It was violets on Friday-
In colors she adores,
It never bothered her at all-
All the crumbs upon the floors...
I hired a maid on Saturday-
My week is now complete,
My wife can garden all she wants-
The house will still be neat!
It's nearly lunch time Sunday-
And I cannot find the maid,
Oh no! I don't believe it!
She's out there WITH THE SPADE!!!
All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.- Joseph Joubert
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
Thomas Jefferson
The garden is a love song, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature. Jeff Cox
Love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies.
Gertrude Jekyll
This used to be among my prayers--a piece of land not so very large, which would contain a garden, and near the house a spring of ever flowing water, and beyond these a bit of wood.
Horace
More and more I feel the need for a house and a garden.
Marie Curie
Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed.
- Lewis Gannit
I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life.
Cicero
God almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon
One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth. Dorothy Frances Gurney
There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp. John Steinbeck
You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry, and stop to smell the flowers along the way.
Walter Hagen
If you have a mind at peace, and a heart that cannot harden,
Go find a door that opens wide upon a lovely garden.
- Author Unknown
Most people don't see the sun, soil, bugs, seeds, plants, moon, water, clouds, and wind the way gardeners do.
Jamie Jobb
How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise.
Henry Mitchell
Flowers and plants are silent presences; they nourish every sense but the ear. Mary Sarton
Flowers are our greatest silent friends.
Jim G. Brown
Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
William Shakespeare
When the sun rises, I go to work.
When the sun goes down I take my rest,
I dig the well from which I drink,
I farm the soil which yields my food,
I share creation, Kings can do no more.
- Chinese Proverb, 2500 B.C.
A garden is a link to the passing seasons.
Sheryl London
I hate to be reminded of the passage of time, and in a garden of flowers one cannot escape from it.
E. V. Lucas
Things seem to move very slowly in a garden. But nothing ever remains the same. Jamie Jobb
Every gardener knows under the cloak of winter lies a miracle--a seed waiting to sprout,
a bulb opening to light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.
Barbara Winkler
I should like to enjoy this summer flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one for me. Andre Gide
All gardening is landscape painting.
- Alexander Pope
The essence of the enjoyment of a garden is that things should look as though they like to grow in it.
Beatrix Farrand
Anywhere you live you can find room for a garden somewhere.
Jamie Jobb
No two gardens are exactly alike.
Felicity Bryan
There is a style of garden to suit every personality.
Tom Wright
All gardens are a form of autobiography.
Robert Dash
It is not possible to use to any good effect all the plants that are to be had. Gertrude Jekyll
One of the most important things a gardener does is look.
The rewards are immeasurable. Elsa Bakalar
Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can't hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms.
- Buckminster Fuller
In a garden...growth has its season. There are spring and summer, but there are also fall and winter.
And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well.
Jerzy Kosinski
Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.
Thomas Fuller (1732)
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries
and very frankly give them fruit for their song.
Joseph Addison
A garden is the interface between the house and the rest of civilization.
Geoffrey Charlesworth
What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message,
sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty.
Henry Ward Beecher
Herbs are the friend of the physician and the pride of cooks.
Charlemagne
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses,
what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
G. K. Chesterton
A plant is like a self-made man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire,
if we only treat him his own way.
Goethe
Grass is always the most elegant, more elegant than rocks and trees,
trees are elegant and so are rocks but grass is more so.
Gertrude Stein
Wherever humans garden magnificently, there are magnificent heartbreaks.
Henry Mitchell
Plants in pots are like animals in a zoo--they're totally dependent on their keepers.
John Van de Water
Begin early. But it's never too late to start.
Emilie Barnes
Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. Elizabeth Bowen
To lock horns with Nature, the only equipment you really need is the constitution of Paul Bunyan and the basic training of a commando.
S. J. Perelman
A country parson without some knowledge of plants
is surely as incomplete as a country parsonage without a garden.
Canon Henry Ellacombe (1895)
There are several ways to lay out a little garden; the best way is to get a gardener.
Karel Capek
Pruning hurts. Pruning helps you grow.
Emilie Barnes
"As for rosemary, I let it run all over my garden walls, not ony because my bees love it but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language." Sir Thomas Moore
CHINESE PROVERBS...
Keep a green tree in your heart
and perhaps a singing bird will come.
~Chinese Proverb~
That the birds of worry and care
fly over your head,
this you cannot change,
but that they build nests in your hair,
this you can prevent.
~Chinese proverb~
A bird does not sing
because it has an answer;
it sings because it has a song.
~Chinese proverb~
There's little risk in becoming overly proud of one's garden because by its very nature is humbling. It has a way of keeping you on your knees. JoAnn Barwick
Even the smallest landscape can offer pride of ownership not only to its inhabitants but to its neighbors. The world delights in a garden....
Creating any garden, big or small, is, in the end, all about joy.
- Julie Moir Messervy
When I was yet but a child, the gardener gave me a tree,
A little slim elm, to be set wherever seemed good to me
What a wonderful thing it seemed! with its lace-edged leaves
uncurled, And its span-long stem, that should grow to the
grandest tree in the world!
So I searched all the garden round, and out over field and hill,
But not a spot could I find that suited my wayward will.
I would have it bowered in the grove, in a close and quiet vale;
I would rear it aloft on the height, to wrestle with the gale.
Then I said, "I will cover its roots with a little earth by the door,
And there it shall live and wait, while I search for a place once more."
But still I could never find it, the place for my wondrous tree,
And it waited and grew by the door, while years passed over me;
Till suddenly, one fine day, I saw it was grown too tall,
And its roots gone down too deep, to be ever moved at all.
So here it is growing still, by the lowly cottage door;
Never so grand and tall as I dreamed it would be of yore,
But it shelters a tired old man in its sunshine-dappled shade,
The children's pattering feet round its knotty knees have played,
Dear singing birds in a storm sometimes take refuge there,
And the stars through its silent boughs shine gloriously fair.
The world is sadly sick, they say,
And plagued by woe and pain.
But look! How looms my garden gay,
With blooms in golden reign!
With lyric music in the air,
Of joy fulfilled in song,
I can't believe that anywhere
Is hate and harm and wrong.
A paradise my garden is,
And there my day is spent;
A steep myself in sunny bliss,
Incredibly content.
Feeling that I am truly part
Of peace so rapt and still,
There's not a care within my heart . . .
How can the world be ill?
Aye, though the land be sick they say,
And named unto pain,
My garden never was so gay,
So innocent, so sane.
My roses mock at misery,
My thrushes vie in song . . .
When only beauty I can see,
How can the world be wrong?
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