April 2006

It is one of the peculiarities of garden-making, the greatest of all the arts, that there are no "great" gardens made by welfare recipients …

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.

A garden is a lovely thing
But gardens are not made
By saying "Oh how beautiful"
And sitting in the shade!

It's Human Nature, or at least a gardener's nature (which is not quite the same thing), to want to live at least one and preferably two climatic zones warmer than where he gardens

Watering, though apparently easy, is difficult to do properly. Ensuring the roots are neither drying nor drowning is an underappreciated art.

A garden raised from seed is a garden raised in the heart, the gardener growing along with the garden.

Gardening may well be one of the world's most important fantasies.

Writing and gardening, these two ways of rendering the world in rows, have a great deal in common.

There may be a fine line between improving garden flowers and making them ugly.

Dreams, not desperation, drive people forward to plant gardens.