It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.

I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. Oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly.You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.

There's no beginning to the farmer's year, / Only recurrent patterns on a scroll / Unwinding...

I like owls. I admire their intransigent spirit. I have respected them deeply ever since I met a baby owl in a wood, when it fell over dead, apparently from sheer temper, because I dared to approach it. It defied me first, and then died. I have never forgotten the horror and shame I experienced when that soft fluffy thing (towards which I had nothing but the most humanitarian motives) fell dead from rage at my feet.

A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life.

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.

Successful gardening is not necessarily a question of wealth, it is a question of love, taste, and knowledge.