One does not begin to make a garden until he wants a garden. To want a garden is to be interested in plants, in the winds and rains, in birds and insects, in the warm-smelling earth.

We accept it because we have seen the vision. We know that we cannot reap the harvest, but we hope that we may so well prepare the land and so diligently sow the seed that our successors may gather the ripened grain.

I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere, they are visible yet everywhere occult.

The happiest life has the greatest number of points of contact with the world, and it has the deepest feeling and sympathy with everything that is.

There is no excellence without labor. One cannot dream oneself into either usefulness or happiness.

Is there any progress in horticulture? If not, it is dead, uninspiring. We cannot live in the past good as it is; we must draw our inspiration from the future.

One does not begin to make a garden until he wants a garden. To want a garden is to be interested in plants, in the winds and rains, in birds and insects, in the warm-smelling earth.