Give the children an opportunity to make garden. Let them grow what they will. It matters less that they grow good plants than that they try for themselves.

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

One's happiness depends less on what he knows than on what he feels.

A garden is half-made when it is well planned. The best gardener is the one who does the most gardening by the winter fire.

I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them, and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere they are visible yet everywhere occult.

Anyone who acquires more than the usual amount of knowledge concerning a subject is bound to leave it as his contribution to the knowledge of the world.