There is a tale…It tells of the days when a blight hung over our land. Nothing prospered. Nothing flourished. Not even zucchini would grow.

It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in ’em,” said Captain Jim. “When I ponder on them seeds I don’t find it nowise hard to believe that we’ve got souls that’ll live in other worlds. You couldn’t hardly believe there was life in them tiny...

Regardless of geographical region or culture gardening is perhaps the most common and shared experience of Nature.

A weed is but an unloved flower.

Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatever he does. He is in fact a wilderness advocate of a certain kind. It is when he respects and nurtures...

A flowing flurry of flowers fell to the floor when I fell in love, as if my heart were a garden that gushed forth and flooded her being with the fragrance of romance.

Writing is like gardening. Planting, watering, and weeding are not enough. You have to prune if you want growth.

Often I’ll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there’s no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountains and of the trees.

Everything is an art, which must be mastered.

A garden is beautiful only when it is filled with people; they determine its beauty

To-day I thinkOnly with scents, – scents dead leaves yield,And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,And the square mustard field;Odours that riseWhen the spade wounds the root of tree,Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,Rhubarb or celery;The smoke’s smell, too,Flowing from where a bonfire burnsThe dead, the waste, the dangerous,And all to sweetness turns.It is enoughTo smell, to...

Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn’t necessarily expect to witness.

Gardening is about cheating, about persuading unlikely plants to survive in unlikely places and when that trick is well accomplished the results can be highly satisfying.

Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me, even if not a single thing grows from what I plant.

Dandelions, like all things in nature are beautiful when you take the time to pay attention to them.

I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said.

He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard...

Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.

The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it.

She was a woman with a broom or a dust-pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You sawher cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or yousaw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringerto...

But gardening is none of that, really. 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...

No one plants rosebushes for the thorns.

After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into...

Speaking the words he had been taught, directing them no longer upward but to the earth on which he knelt, he prayed: ‘For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.’ … he… felt his heart suddenly flow over with thankfulness… like a gush of warm water… All that remains is to live...

In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens — a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree — the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom...

Here march the eaters of earth, the swallowers of rain.

A gardin is where you can find a whole spectrum of life, birth and death

Novels and gardens,” she says. “I like to move from plot to plot.

If every individual should plant a tree in their life time, the world will be full of trees.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.–The Fruit Hunters

…there’s never a garden in all the parish but what there’s endless waste in it for want o’ somebody as could use everything up. It’s what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o’ victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what...

As I leave the gardenI take with me a renewed view,And a quiet soul.

My hands will get dirty holding your rose-like heart, because love is like gardening—it’s earthy and takes work to keep it alive.

I think if we all gardened more, they and all of the other birds that fly in the air above and light in my garden below would be better off. I know that God values them no less than I do. So when I plant in spring I also hope to taste of God in...

Soap wasn’t invented until the Romans, who also invented interesting sex. (Since my editor informs me that a gardening book is not a proper venue for discussions of interesting sex, I will go into this topic in more detail when I write my private memoirs, ‘A Petunia Named Desire’).

Fanfare for the MakersA cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?To the small fire that never leaves the sky.To the great fire that boils the daily pot.To all the things we are not remembered by,Which we remember and bless. To all the thingsThat will not notice when we die,Yet lend the passing moment words and...

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this...

My brain is divided into two butterflies, and both are in love with your rose-shaped heart. If you’ve got the garden, I’ve got my whole life.

The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

Ol’ man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin’ comin’ up glowin’ Fruit of jewels all shinin’ in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin’ in the shade, just ready...

A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That’s why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to heaven, or the other place, Boca Raton. If you dig up a...

Sunflowers for Sarita is a fast-paced, high caliber romantic suspense. I couldn’t stop reading!

The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.

He who leaves the plants in a garden to themselves will soon find to his surprise that the garden is overgrown by weeds and that even the basic character of the plants has changed. If therefore the garden is to remain the breeding ground for the plants, if, in other words, it is to lift...

However, although you might think this is the time of year to take some time off, you must never transgress one of the allotment rules: ‘Thou shan’t go on holiday in summer!

It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success…the first thrill of creation…the first taste of blood. This, surely, must be akin to the pride of paternity…indeed, many soured bachelors would wager that it must be almost as wonderful to see the first tiny...

Many Detroiters, for example, are beginning to see urban agriculture as a real part of the solution; to grow things right where people live, where they work, and definitely need healthier food on the table. Green city gardens are scattered throughout Detroit now, from the schoolyard at Catherine Ferguson Academy for pregnant teens and teen...

A poor old Widow in her weedsSowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;Not too shallow, and not too deep,And down came April — drip — drip — drip.Up shone May, like gold, and soonGreen as an arbour grew leafy June.And now all summer she sits and sewsWhere willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,Campion, toadflax,...