GardenWise

Garden Design:

“Designing the garden is like learning to speak. You begin with odd words – learning the individual plants. Then you create a simple phrase, finding two or three plants that look well together, next comes a sentence and finally the complete story.”
~ Beth Chatto

“Every gardener should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irrespective of size or wealth.” -Vita Sackville-West

Gardens are not just case studies in design. They are stories of people’s lives.
-Michael Riley

Wherever man exists, he finds the need to redesign, to recreate the world. A more beautiful world, purer, sweeter smelling and more colorful. A garden is probably the spot where the hopes for civilization are best captured. In fact, man defines himself by his garden.
-THE ENCHANTED GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE

About The Flowers:

. . I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.~Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”
- Luther Burbank

The garden should be adorned with roses and lilies, the turnsole, violets, and mandrake; there you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, garden-cress, and peonies. There should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic, pumpkins and shallots. The cucumber growing in its lap, the drowsy poppy, the daffodil and brank-ursine ennoble a garden. Nor are there wanting, if occasion further thee, pottage-herbs: beets, herb-mercury, orache, sorrel and mallows, anise, mustard, white pepper and wormwood do good service to the gardener.
Alexander of Neckam (1157 – 1217)
Source: Of the Nature of Things (De naturis rerum) 1187

Gardening and Writing:

From the Forward to ‘Green Thoughts’ By Eleanor Perenyi, 1918-2009,
“Why, then presume to write a book about gardening? The simplest answer is that a writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subject—I take that as inevitable. One acquires one’s opinions and prejudices, picks up a trick or two, learns to question supposedly expert judgments, reads, saves clippings, and is eventually overtaken by the desire to pass it all on. But there is something more: As I look about me, I have reason to believe I belong to a vanishing species. Gardens like mine, which go by the unpleasing name of ‘labor intensive’ are on their way out and before they go, I would like to contribute my penny’s worth to their history.”

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.
-Dwight David Eisenhower

Just Gardens

“The rules of the garden are the rules of art; the rules of the rock garden are the more awful rules of Nature herself” ~Reginald Farrer, My Rock Garden 1920

“Wherever humans garden magnificently, there are magnificent heartbreaks.”
~Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman

“Simplicity, tranquility, and clarity are the underlying baselines of my best work, and the belief that a garden can be a work of art.”
~ Ted Smyth

Timely Sayings

found on sundials:

NON NUMERO NISI SERANAS (or AUREAS) and variations: Let others tell of storms and showers, I count only sunny hours

TEMPUS FUGIT and variations: Time flies

BEHOLD AND BE GONE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS

CARPE DIEM Seize the day

DEPRESSA RESURGO I set to rise

DISCE TUOS NUMERARE DIES Learn to number thy days

EHEU FUGACES LABUNTUR ANNI Alas the fleeting years slip by

TRIFLE NOT YOUR TIME IS SHORT

L’HEURE PASSE, L’AMITIE RESTE Time passes, friendship remains

FESTINAT SUPREMA The last hour approaches

FUMUS ET UMBRA SUMUS We are naught but smoke and shadow

HOC TUUM EST The present is all you may claim as yours

HODIE MIHI, CRAS TIBI Today is mine, tomorrow may be yours

THE IDLE WHO WOULD BE COUNTED WISE

THINK ALL DELIGHT IN PASTIME LIES

NOR HEED THEY WHAT THE WISE CONDEMN:

AS THEY PASS TIME, TIME PASSES THEM

I NOTE THE TIME THAT YOU WASTE

NOW IS YESTERDAY’S TOMORROW

MORA TRAHIT PERICULUM Delay is dangerous

MORS OMNIA VINCIT Death conquers all

NIL DAT QUOD NON HABET Nothing comes of nothing

A CLOCK THE TIME MAY WRONGLY TELL, I NEVER IF THE SUN SHINES WELL

NEQUE LUX SINE UMBRA There is no light without shade

NIHIL VELOCIUS ANNIS Nothing is swifter than time

C’EST L’HEURE DE BOIRE (or VIVRE) It’s time to drink (or live)

WITH MY SHADOW MOVES THE WORLD

SOL SPLENDIT OMNIBUS The sun shines for all

DU HABST DEN ETWAS GUT GETHAN Of the hours let there be none, in which by you no good is done

WE BOTH HASTEN TOWARDS SUNSET

SILENS LOQUOR Though silent, I speak

LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

~collected by michaelweishan.com

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