Weather

. . . the full double [peonies], very like dahlias that have gone to heaven and been transformed.

It should be said, though without any intention of adding to the world’s already adequate store of guilt, that the average gardener is surprisingly lazy and, not to split hairs about it, pig-headed.

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.

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

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

What is life, and what is gardening, if one is not always ready to make new friends and make new experiments?

There is nothing better to cure a wicked case of self obsession that a good dose of fresh air and dirty work.

The garden is not only an ornamental place, but a habitat and a civilization.

Snowdrops provide the intermezzo between winter and spring.

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment. It bursts upon a man every year . . . as though it had never happened before, but had just been shown by God how to do it, and tried, and found the impossible possible.

I had to remember that I was only the referee, the human being who weeded and pinched back and watched everything grow. If I was patient and paid close attention, perennials would let me know where they wanted to be.

It should be said, though without any intention of adding to the world’s already adequate store of guilt, that the average gardener is surprisingly lazy and, not to split hairs about it, pig-headed.

There is nothing better to cure a wicked case of self obsession that a good dose of fresh air and dirty work.