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The Alexanders of this world who find nations easily conquered should come up against the California annual wild flower seed. It gives you pause: who's the boss? If you need to be boss, stick to nasturtiums and marigolds.
Seeing a plant that you have known only in catalogues is like recognizing a celebrity in a crowd.
Now, nobody imagines his modest little patch is going to be the greatest thing since copper bracelets, no. But it will be personal, and it will be fascinating, because there is no such thing as dullness when the gardener is going full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes, as it were.
I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid that they are not alive.
Gardening is the most profound and complex of the arts, operating not just inessentially or marginally through time, but deliberately and consciously. What makes a garden great is the tension between the dimensions, between what is structurally permanent and what is temporarily, immediately, imposed upon that structure.
One way to keep crows out of the corn patch is to plant rhubarb instead.
Marcescence is the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed. It is most obvious in deciduous trees that retain leaves through the winter. Several trees normally have marcescent leaves such as oak (Quercus), beech (Fagus) and hornbeam (Carpinus).
Winter is the icicle in the soul of the gardener.
The two most mysterious aspects of clematis are, How is the word pronounced? and, What is its plural form? Once these questions are answered, growing the plants is plain sailing.
One way to keep crows out of the corn patch is to plant rhubarb instead.
What you plant in your garden reflects your own sensibility, your concept of beauty, your sense of form. Every true garden is an imaginative construct, after all.
It is a great joy the day we discover that we can learn things without having to make the mistake ourselves.
Every gardener has a strange and romantic tale to tell, if you can worm it out of him – of blue flowers that came up yellow, or of a white lily that sinned in the night and greeted the dawn with crimson cheeks. In the strong heart of every gardener, some wild secret stirs.
