If you want good roses, sharpen your knife and harden your heart.
Forget the times of trouble, but not the truths they taught. Forget the days of sorrow, but not the strength they brought. Forget the storms you battled through beneath a heavy load – but not the light that led you safely down the unknown road.
In a garden you can find, quiet thoughts that calm the mind.
Happy is the person who can keep a quiet heart, in the chaos and tumult of this modern world.
I welcome the autumnal chill in the air. There is a stimulation about it. Life moves to a different rhythm. There is a sense of change in the atmosphere and change is good inasmuch as it prevents stagnation. We should grow weary of a summer that never ended.
It has been said that the only reason for leaving England is to give yourself the pleasure of coming back to it.
While it is February one can taste the full joys of anticipation. Spring stands at the gate with her finger on the latch.
Winter sunshine is a fairy wand touching everything with a strange magic. It is like the smile of a friend in time of sorrow.
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.
Every noble achievement is a dream before it is a reality just as the oak is an acorn before it is a tree.
Success and failure, triumph and disaster. That is the rhythm of life in the garden.
New words are always being born and old ones fading away.
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.
In looking back we remember only the triumphant consummations of each season. Failures and frustrations are forgotten; garden-memories are as perfect as garden-hopes.
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.
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?