FAQ

. . . some gardens are more fantastic than others, and a very few are so fantastic that they seem to be more about fantasy than about gardening. Like a play within a play, these gardens comment on the nature of illusion, the mechanics of mesmerization, the mystery of why and how the simple act of cordoning off space and time can charge them so highly with meaning.

Gardening at first felt like a natural pleasure, and then it became a necessary one.

Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.

Aren't our gardens assembled fragments of our dreams and daydreams, our memories, images, and visions, remembrances of times past, fantasies, pieces of paradise we try to re-create?

Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.

. . . A bunch of daisies has a peculiarly earthy smell, especially when it comes as a hot little gift in the hand of a child.

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.

In a lot of ways, I'm just hitting my stride, just a little more tired while striding.

If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don't you see? Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?

Sometimes survival in compost piles has a way of glorifying a plant you thought you hated.

One of the things childhood is is a process of learning about the various paths that lead out of nature and into culture, and the garden contains many of these.

'I have had almost every rose that you can grow,' she says, 'and some died, but at least I have made their acquaintance.'

It is not a bad thing for plants to express individualism. Not everyone can be a marigold.