daffodils

. . . 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.

You always carry the memory of your garden in your heart. No matter where on earth you are . . . some mysterious tie will always bind you to your very own patch of soil.

Improbability is not a quality we value in landscapes.

But gardeners do not dwell too long on catastrophe. Failure is an accepted part of daily life and we value our successes the more.

There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.

Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel.

Like longtime parents, longtime gardeners learn when to fret and when to shrug.

Writing and gardening, these two ways of rendering the world in rows, have a great deal in common.

But gardeners do not dwell too long on catastrophe. Failure is an accepted part of daily life and we value our successes the more.

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

It isn’t that I don’t like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.

There are two difficulties with ground covers: first to get them to grow, and then to get them not to.