The gardens I love best are those that are still affectionately tended by the people who own them and who made them - who planned and planted and replanned and replanted them, who dug in the dirt and moved hoses and watched the gardens change with the cycle of the seasons and over the passage of years.

Allen Lacy

Categorized in : Years Love Is Garden

Show me a person without prejudice of any kind on any subject and I'll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener. Prejudice against people is reprehensible, but a healthy set of prejudices is a gardener's best friend. Gardening is complicated, and prejudice simplifies it enormously.

gardening healthy people

Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us. by Allen Lacy

Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.

divides gardening

I cannot walk into our garden without constantly being reminded of the friends who have shared their plants.

plant garden walks

Insects leave (Madagascar periwinkle) Catharanthus roseus out of their diets. So, for that matter, do deer. The reason is that the plants are loaded with alkaloids so potent that they are the source of vincristine and vinblastine. These are drugs important in routines of chemotherapy for treating Hodgkin's disease and certain forms of leukemia.

madagascar drug important

Plants are the original chemists. Their sophistication makes DuPont and Monsanto look like little kids with chemistry sets.

littles kids looks

In addition to all its rich offerings to the body and its five se... by Allen Lacy

In addition to all its rich offerings to the body and its five senses, gardening engages the mind.

gardening offering mind

In a well-made garden every day is new. by Allen Lacy

In a well-made garden every day is new.

wells garden made

A powerful hand lens [Eschenback Leutchlupe] with a focused beam of light opens up an entire world below the threshold of the ordinary experience of seeing.

powerful light hands

One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener. by Allen Lacy

One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener.

gardener becoming

Gardening is in large measure a phenomenon of attention. by Allen Lacy

Gardening is in large measure a phenomenon of attention.

phenomenon gardening attention

We can plant to suit the needs of the birds and other wildlife that find a haven and a habitat on our home ground, and we can understand that to do so is a moral dictate, not a personal whim.

home bird needs

Democracy is fine in politics. It should stay there, and we need more of it. But its political virture is no reason to practice it in the garden.

garden practice evil

An angel, legend has it, took pity on a little shepherd girl who had nothing to give to the Infant Jesus in his manger. The angel handed her a weed, but first transformed it into this beautiful flower of winter.

weed girl beautiful

Am I accurately reporting what I see in such a blossom? The answe... by Allen Lacy

Am I accurately reporting what I see in such a blossom? The answer is no ... and yes.

accuracy answers

All gardeners need to know when to accept something wonderful and unexpected, taking no credit except for letting it be.

creativity garden imagination

Of course, the character of my garden is also determined by things beyond any human decision, mine or anyone else's.

garden decision character

Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII of France, had such an aversion to roses that she could not stand seeing one even in a painting.

austria wife rose

Not knowing where your food comes from is a primary form of alien... by Allen Lacy

Not knowing where your food comes from is a primary form of alienation.

alienation form knowing

But there is one place where a person can make choices that will lead in a small way toward greater sanity in dealing with the natural order. That place is the private garden.

garden choices order

When I need to be precise about a plant, I use its Latin name, even if my nongardening friends sometimes look at me a little funny for using big words in a dead language - or in the kind of horticultural Esperanto that botanical names make up.

esperanto names latin