hellebores

Low maintenance is for homeowners, not gardeners!

Optimism overrules pessimism because every spring is an opportunity to start again.

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.

[Colchicums] are sort of like the nuts in my cookies... I don't think about them a lot, but I'd certainly miss them if they weren't there.

But a garden is somewhat exalted above ordinary notions of correctness. A garden is more than a matter of the right fish fork, as it were.

To many gardeners, seed catalogues are the most accurate depiction we have of the Garden from which humans were expelled.

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

I am instinctively suspicious of any garden writer (or gardener) who is insufficiently fretful.

This morning the sun and warmth have gone, a sleety rain is making it difficult to be outside, so I have made a list of the fall jobs. . . . The list that I gradually compile is long, but in order to give myself a sense of accomplishment, I include one or two jobs that I have already done.

But a garden is somewhat exalted above ordinary notions of correctness. A garden is more than a matter of the right fish fork, as it were.

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.

At such times I understand that the enjoyment of looking is nothing compared with the pleasure of gardening--and that I would much rather garden than have a Garden.

This is how it should be with gardens and gardeners. They should love what they own, and own what they love; but their gardens must never own them, for there will be no pleasure in them if they do.