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
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.
In practice
This quote could be used at a gardening workshop to discuss the importance of fragrance in flowers.
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.
I just think that gardening is about the future, a slow thing, that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.
Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.
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.
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.
I have learnt that gardens are like happiness: you cannot pursue them as an absolute thing or moment.
Nature has lent us life at interest, like money, and has fixed no day for its payment.
The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.
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.
Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we, know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written.
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. “Katniss,” I said aloud. It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.
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