native-plants
…the shivery perfection that winter can bring to our gardens.
A writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subject--I take that as inevitable.
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.
It's the gardener's job to choose those that will thrive in his or her climate, rather than trying to force the plants to grow where they're not well suited.
I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died.
The biggest crocuses are also excellent for gardeners who fear they are themselves getting almost too refined to breathe.
Gardening may well be one of the world's most important fantasies.
I think you need to be possessed to farm, you have to have a calling.
Agri-tourism is the last refuge of agriculture
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.
A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
I am very fond of the Spring-flowering colchicums, but unfortunately slugs are also, and those greedy gastropods and I have a race for who can see the flower-buds first. If I win I go out after dark with an acetylene lamp and a hatpin and spear the little army of slugs making for a tea party at the sign of the Colchicum.
There is nothing better to cure a wicked case of self obsession that a good dose of fresh air and dirty work.
