Soil is a resource, a living, breathing entity that, if treated properly, will maintain itself. It's our lifeline for survival. When it has finally been depleted, the human population will disappear. . . . Project you imagination into the soil below you next time you go into the garden. Think with compassion of the life that exists there. Think, the drama, the sexuality, the harvesting, the work that carries on ceaselessly. Think about the meaning of being a steward for the earth.

Soil is a resource, a living, breathing entity that, if treated properly, will maintain itself. It's our lifeline for survival. When it has finally been depleted, the human population will disappear. . . . Project you imagination into the soil below you next time you go into the garden. Think with compassion of the life that exists there. Think, the drama, the sexuality, the harvesting, the work that carries on ceaselessly. Think about the meaning of being a steward for the earth.

The longer you garden the better the eye gets, the more tuned to how colors vibrate in different ways and what they can do to each other. You become a scientist as well as an artist, with the lines between increasingly blurred.

This planet is an exquisitely arranged and interconnected system. What's controlled in one place is going to have consequences in another place. Our job as gardeners is to try and figure this out no matter how small our allotted space might be. Discipline has to be the watchword for our controlling hands. It means not gardening without thinking of the garden as a habitat: for mice, for squirrels, for bees and wasps. For other living creatures beyond ourselves.