I have always felt that the best gardens aspired to coppice and that the best woods have all the elements of the very best gardens.
Monty DonRead
Sweet peas should smell. Half the point of growing sweet peas is to cut them for the house; they should fill a room with an almost painful olfactory inarticulateness. But most sweet peas smell of nothing. This does not stop them being beautiful, but they are like food with no flavour.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sweet peas should have a strong fragrance, but many lack scent, making them less fulfilling despite their beauty.
In this quote, Monty Don reflects on the experience of growing sweet peas, emphasizing that their fragrance is an essential aspect of their appeal. While many varieties may lack the desirable scent, they remain visually stunning, drawing a parallel to the idea that beauty without deeper qualities, like flavor in food, can leave one feeling unfulfilled.
Themes
Sweet PeasFragranceBeautyGrowthNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used at a gardening workshop to discuss the importance of fragrance in flowers.
More from Monty Don
All quotes →I just think that gardening is about the future, a slow thing, that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.
Monty DonRead
Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.
Monty DonRead
I use the period between Christmas and New Year to potter about, think and completely change my mindset. In that easy no-man's-land between Boxing Day and New Year, loins are girded and mettle readied. It is time, as we voyagers bid farewell to the old year, to fare forward.
Monty DonRead
I am always more interested in people than plants. Nature doesn't make gardens, people make gardens. And the story of a garden is always the story of a person.
Monty DonRead
I have learnt that gardens are like happiness: you cannot pursue them as an absolute thing or moment.
Monty DonRead
Similar quotes
All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander.
John MuirRead
O, beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain.
Katharine Lee BatesRead
How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
Matsuo BashoRead
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens, you have made them bright, precious and fair.
Francis Of AssisiRead
All things are connected, like the blood that runs in your family "The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father." 1854 The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.
Chief SeattleRead
How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!
Thomas JeffersonRead