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.

I know of no common interest that exceeds gardening as a source of lifelong friendships, nor as a means of making new friends almost constantly.

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.

In a well-made garden every day is new.

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.

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

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.