The very best garden is a new one, on virgin ground. Plants leap out of that spot.

You can put a gardener behind the wheel, but you can't keep her eyes off the landscape.

The best gardener is a baby killer. Baby insects are much easier to kill than adults, and haven't yet developed the big mouths and voracious appetite of the adolescent.

You don't know the plant until you've killed it. Then you've learned something.

Take care with manufactured chemicals, certainly. Your safety and long term health are more important than anything. Yet don't forget that if you grow even a dozen different plants, you are surrounded by chemistry. Inside their cells even the most ordinary plants creates potent fungicides, insecticides, irritants, balms, hallucinogens, sedatives, nerve toxins, cell repair stimulants, lures, repellents... you name it. Treat all plants with respect!

We think we learn by growing a plant but we can't know if it's just surviving or truly living? We really don't know anything about a plant until we kill it.

A colorful handle on a tool does nothing for me. Once it drops into that jungle out there, unless it's absolutely huge, it's gone until fall.