December 2006
Agri-tourism is the last refuge of agriculture
Getting rid of poor plants is as important as seeking out the best.
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 …
The biggest crocuses are also excellent for gardeners who fear they are themselves getting almost too refined to breathe.
Artichokes are no fools.
Working the soil brings me back to my own nature, as I now understand that tending a garden is the same as taking care of myself.
A garden raised from seed is a garden raised in the heart, the gardener growing along with the garden.
And though one has begun to search for signs of spring almost since January, and to receive them, like postcards sent on a long voyage to home, it is with the greening of the grass that spring has, finally, certainly arrived.
The trouble with master plans in gardens, then, is simply that they do not take into account masterful plants. Nor addled masters.
. . . Whoever it was who said Nature made no mistakes in colour harmony was either colour-blind or a sentimentalist. Nature makes the most hideous mistakes; and it is up to us gardeners to control and correct them.
To many gardeners, seed catalogues are the most accurate depiction we have of the Garden from which humans were expelled.
