Catalog review
Gardening at first felt like a natural pleasure, and then it became a necessary one.
Seeing a plant that you have known only in catalogues is like recognizing a celebrity in a crowd.
The biggest crocuses are also excellent for gardeners who fear they are themselves getting almost too refined to breathe.
It will never rain roses. When we want to have more roses, we must plant more.
Intensive gardening, biodynamic bed-building, and every other gardening technique will seriously insult your imagination if you follow every step blindly. Every gardener should experiment and adapt.
Gardeners always delight in doing something that another gardener says can't be done.
In the end, this may be the most important thing about frost: Frost slows us down. In spring, it tempers our eagerness. In fall, it brings closure and rest. In our gotta-go world--where every nanosecond seems to count--slowness can be a great gift. So rather than see Jack Frost as an adversary, you could choose to greet him as a friend.
We have to stand still in a garden and listen to its rhythms, look for the signs and symbols and meanings, hear its utterances. We have to look down and up, notice the needles and the haystacks.
To visit a garden properly is a demanding business; most visitors simply don't have the time.
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
Winter is the icicle in the soul of the gardener.
Despite these losses and setbacks, like King Sisyphus, gardeners forever keep rolling that rock up the hill, convinced we are progressing toward the day it will stay in place up there and not roll back on us, the day our gardens will be just as we want them.
It will never rain roses. When we want to have more roses, we must plant more.
