The Oldfields of the future are beyond hearing; they are shut up in the factories and the workshops, leading a rackety and mechanical existence, to the damage of their bodies and the peril of their souls, for the sake of an extra pound or so a week, which they promptly spend on mental or physical narcotics.

Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.

It is only to the gardener that time is a friend, giving each year more than he steals.

To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?

A garden is a place for shaping a little world of your own according to your heart's desire.

Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

A gardener is never shut out from his garden, wherever he may be. Its comfort never fails. Though the city may close about him, and the grime and soot descend upon him, he can still wander in his garden, does he but close his eyes.