If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Cicero It’s hot—thirty-two degrees Celsius hot. I’m standing at my community garden plot, hose in hand, watering and plucking the odd spring of dill that’s become a persistent weed since the gardener next door let a forest of hers go to seed.
A visitor to a garden sees the successes, usually. The gardener remembers mistakes and losses, some for a long time, and imagines the garden in a year, and in an unimaginable future.” W.S. Merwin, What Is a Garden? I get nothing done. Church, in the morning, followed by a trip to a garden centre for
Gardens are a form of autobiography. Sydney Eddison, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older There’s a bag of assorted fish parts thawing in the fridge. I’ve been saving it since Gerry’s salmon fishing trip last summer for precisely this day. A mason jar full of crushed eggshells awaits, along
A true gardener would never pretend that gardening is all pleasure, or that it always prompts reflection. But she might claim that in the garden she has tasted Paradise. Vigen Guroian, The Fragrance of God I spend a pleasant morning in the garden tucking seeds into the soil and dreaming. A fellow gardener gives me
Henry Mitchell, in his book One Man's Garden, observes that "it is not important for a garden to be beautiful" in everyone's eyes. But "it is extremely important for the gardener to think it is a fair substitute for Eden." Perhaps this is an overstatement, or perhaps it is a theological truth. Vigen Guroian, Inheriting
Strip away the gadgets and the techniques, the books and the magazines and the soil test kits, and what you're left with, at the end of the day, is this: a stretch of freshly turned dirt, a handful of seeds scratched into the surface, and a marker to remember where they went. It is at
We gardeners are healthy, joyous, natural creatures. We are practical, patient, optimistic. We declare our optimism every year, every season, with every act of planting. Carol Deppe, The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times Today’s the day: a sunshiny and warm one and—best of all—a gardening one. I’m looking forward to spending