I like muddling things up; and if a herb looks nice in a border, then why not grow it there? Why not grow anything anywhere so long as it looks right where it is? That is, surely, the art of gardening. Vita Sackville-West More Quotes by Vita Sackville-West More Quotes From Vita Sackville-West The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before. Vita Sackville-West optimistic garden funny The more one gardens, the more one learns; And the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows. Vita Sackville-West learning education knowledge I loved you when love was Spring, and May, Loved you when summer deepened into June, and now when autumn yellows all the leaves. Vita Sackville-West summer spring love I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. Vita Sackville-West long-distance-relationship missing love A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it. Vita Sackville-West flower may thinking I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all. Vita Sackville-West experience success years There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree Vita Sackville-West passion marriage love Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens, When I have no engagements written on my block, When no one comes to disturb my inward peace, When no one comes to take me away from myself And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle, A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection, Being so contrived that it takes too long a time To get myself back to myself when they have gone. Vita Sackville-West block mirrors reflection Flowers really do intoxicate me. Vita Sackville-West flower I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. Oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly.You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it. Vita Sackville-West clever love-you art It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Vita Sackville-West writing time life Successful gardening is not necessarily a question of wealth, it is a question of love, taste, and knowledge. Vita Sackville-West gardening taste successful It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose, Vita Sackville-West summer book fall A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life. Vita Sackville-West strong roots children But you, oh gardener, poet that you be / Though unaware, now use your seeds like words / And make them lilt with color nicely flung. Vita Sackville-West gardening color use Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed. Vita Sackville-West ambitious safety hate Still, no gardener would be a gardener if he did not live in hope. Vita Sackville-West gardener gardening would-be Not seeing is half-believing. Vita Sackville-West half inspirational believe The farmer and the gardener are both busy, the gardener perhaps the more excitable of the two, for he is more of the amateur, concerned with the creation of beauty rather than with the providing of food. Gardening is a luxury occupation; an ornament, not a necessity, of life. Vita Sackville-West gardening luxury two For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation. Vita Sackville-West broken heart years
