January 2008

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

But gardening is the art of the frustratingly imaginable, of triumph against ridiculous odds, and even rock-gardeners, devoted to the cult and cultivation of the nearly-invisible, must sometimes dream grandiosely.

Almost anything you do in the garden, for example weeding, is an effort to create some sort of order out of nature's tendency to run wild. There has to be a certain degree of domestication in a garden. The danger is that you can so tame a garden that it becomes a thing. It becomes landscaping.

I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid that they are not alive.

The biggest crocuses are also excellent for gardeners who fear they are themselves getting almost too refined to breathe.

There’s one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor’s.

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.

Snowdrops provide the intermezzo between winter and spring.

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.