referencebooks

The Quotable Gardener

By Kathy Ishizuka.

Published by McGraw-Hill, 2001.

This is a 6" by 8.5" hardbound book running to 267 pages including the author index, plus a long table of contents and an introduction.

The Quotable Gardener is simply a specialized book of quotations about gardening. It is divided into numerous small, thematic sections, with titles like "Animals in the Garden," "Anticipation," "Beauty," "Bees and Butterflies," "Bonsai," "Boundaries," "Buds," "Bulbs," "Challenge/Failure," "City Gardens," "Compost," "Control," etc.

Many of the quotations can be read allegorically, and remind me of Chance the Gardener in Being There. There seems to be much unassuming wisdom to be found in the world of gardening.

Many of the quotes come from a British tradition of gardens in upper-class country estates, which some people enjoy reading, but might not relate that well to your average American middle-class gardener. They don't make up the majority of the selections, however.

Here are a couple of random quotes from the collection:

From the section titled "Surprise:"

One of the small delights of gardening, undramatic but recurring, is when phlox or columbines seed themselves in unplanned places. When trickles of creeping jenny soften stony outlines, or when Welsh poppies cram a corner with their brilliant cadmium yellow alongside the deep blue spires of Jacob's ladder, all arbitrarily seeding themselves like coloured smells about the place.
- Mirabel Osler, A Gentle Plea for Chaos, 1989

In the section titled "Seasons:"

People who are not gardeners always say that the bare beds of winter are uninteresting; gardeners know better, and take even a certain pleasure in the neatness of the newly dug, bare, brown earth.
- Vita Sackville-West, How Does Your Garden Grow?, 1935.

This is a nice, handy collection.