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

The trees change their voices in autumn as well as their shapes. No longer do they whisper to one another in muffled tones as they did in summer; they talk in a different leaf-language now. The wind moves through the boughs like fingers drawn across the strings of a harp filling the air with the harsh dry sound of sapless leaves. It is the main theme of the autumn music, this murmuring counterpoint of dead leaves.

....the ancient ritual of the earth; ploughing and planting, reaping and threshing. The fundamental business remains unaltered; it is only the methods and tools that science is changing.

much of gardening is a struggle against the fecundity of Nature.

New words are always being born and old ones fading away.

Success and failure, triumph and disaster. That is the rhythm of life in the garden.

Few would dispute with the rose her claim to be the queen of flowers, for where is her equal to be found? Is she not God’s masterpiece?