garden

Each year the big garden grew smaller and Jane - who grew flowers by choice, not corn or stringbeans - worked at the vegetables more than I did. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . . . and each summer I largely failed. Shamefaced, I planted no garden at all.

Amazingly enough, almost all the fruits grown in home gardens, from strawberries to apricots, are members of the same plant family, Rosaceae, along with such decorative favorites as roses, mountain ash, flowering quince. . . . Worldwide, there are about 3,400 members of this very ancient plant group, which exhibit primitive characteristics.

Walls are so necessary for gardens, that even to multiply them, I make as many little gardens as I can in the neighborhood of the great one, whereby I have not only all-fruits or espaliers and shelter, which is very considerable; but am also thereby enabled to correct some defects and irregularities which render the garden disagreeable.

Poets and novelists are often moved to put into words the subtle qualities of the landscape, sometime purely for the beauty of it, and sometimes as a way of alluding to certain human feelings. Landscape design can translate such literary landscapes into three-dimensional form in the garden. Like the poet, the garden designer may allude to human feelings in his portrayals of nature.

If there's one thing I can say about my garden, it can always surprise me.

The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchini will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt.

Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor's motorized garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one.

A garden should feel like a walk in the woods.

One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a package of garden seeds.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.