It has been said that the only reason for leaving England is to give yourself the pleasure of coming back to it.

If you want good roses, sharpen your knife and harden your heart.

Winter sunshine is a fairy wand touching everything with a strange magic. It is like the smile of a friend in time of sorrow.

I thought I had finished with romantic adventures, but half-way through life and well past the age for losing one's heart, I was suddenly swept off my feet by a new love, a passionate, tyrannical, all-absorbing emotion: the love of a garden.

Life is like a field, where we must gather what we grow, weed or wheat... this is the law, we reap the crop we sow.

September is the month of maturity; the heaped basket and the garnered sheaf. It is the month of climax and completion. September! I never tire of turning it over and over in my mind. It has warmth, depth and colour. It glows like old amber.

This is the divine moment when we can hold the fairest blossom of spring in one hand and the sweetest flowers of early summer in the other.