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

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

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.

I suppose that for most people one of the darker joys of gardening is that once you've got started it's not at all hard to find someone who knows a little bit less than you.

Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.

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

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.