Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.
Interpretation
Gardening offers a peaceful and fulfilling experience that benefits both the mind and body.
This quote by John Evelyn highlights the profound impact that gardening can have on individuals. It emphasizes that gardening is not just a simple task, but an enriching activity that promotes tranquility, satisfaction, and contributes to overall well-being. Engaging with nature through gardening fosters deep contemplation and can lead to improved health and longevity, making it an essential practice for a fulfilling life.
In practice
A speaker at a community gardening event could use this quote to emphasize the benefits of gardening.
The Hellish and dismal cloud of...Coal...perpetually imminent over (London) ...that her inhabitants breathe nothing but impure and thick mist...corrupting the lungs and disordering the entire habit of their bodies; so the Catarrhs,...Cough, and Consumption, range more in this one City, than in the whole Earth besides.
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
I think that water is immediately interesting. It's just, as an element, it is full of life. It is associated with origin; it is bright - it reflects you.
At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.
Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.
January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps -- but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.
They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and- leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.
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