media-mentions
To northern gardeners, this time of year [March] is full of anxious pleasure. Even as they daydream about the botanical pleasures of June and July, ordinary mortals find themselves nearly defeated by the gardening deadlines that pass so swiftly in March. Extraordinary mortals--whose seeds arrived two months ago, whose windows are now full of seedlings, and who are ready to sow peas and carrots the instant the soil thaws--will suffer torments of their own when the perfections they're planning somehow fail to germinate or blossom. A garden is just a way of mapping the strengths and limitations of your personality onto the soil. It would be too much to bear if nature didn't temper a gardener's ambition or laziness with her own unsolicited abundance.
Dreams, not desperation, drive people forward to plant gardens.
Getting rid of poor plants is as important as seeking out the best.
The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing better than they have ever done before.
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.
. . . the full double [peonies], very like dahlias that have gone to heaven and been transformed.
The trouble with master plans in gardens, then, is simply that they do not take into account masterful plants. Nor addled masters.
[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.
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.
