Plants

"My garden is a lovesome thing—God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern grot— The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not.— Not God in gardens! When the sun is cool? Nay, but I have a sign! 'Tis very sure God walks in mine."

"God Almighty first planted a garden."

"There was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch. Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his crag-bound head against the sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes.Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden. Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches, and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House."

"[N]one but a poet could have made such a garden."

"Once again, I experienced that overwhelming joy in the universe that I had felt in London outside the V and A. But this time, my consciousness of the world seemed larger, more complex. It was the mystic's sensation of oneness, of everything blending into everything else. Everything I looked at reminded me of something else, which also became present to my consciousness, as if I were simultaneously seeing a million worlds and smelling a million scents and hearing a million sounds—not mixed up, but each separate and clear. I was overwhelmed with a sense of my smallness in the face of this vast, beautiful, objective universe, this universe whose chief miracle is that it exists, as well as myself. It is no dream, but a great garden in which life is trying to obtain a foothold. I experienced a desire to burst into tears of gratitude; then I controlled it, and the feeling subsided into a calm sense of immense, infinite beauty."

"We have descended into the garden and caught 300 slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and squalid in gardening. It makes it so like life."

"Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown."

"A gardener's greatest skill isn't control, or planning, or power... It's listening. The plants know exactly what to do, and will tell you what they need to do it. All you must do is listen......and provide."

"Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden."

"Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suff'ring eye inverted nature sees, Trees cut in statues, statues thick as trees; With here a fountain never to be play'd, And there a summer-house that knows no shade."

"Consult the genius of the place in all, That tells the waters or to rise, or fall, Or helps th'ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale, Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades, Now breaks, or now directs, th'intending lines, Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs."

"To build, to plant, whatever you intend, To rear the column, or the arch to bend, To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot, In all, let Nature never be forgot."

"In laying out a garden, the first and chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place."

"The most beautiful of all gardens is assuredly not that which is rather forest or field than garden, the 'landscape garden' of a false taste; nor, on the other hand, the shaven and trimmed and weeded parterre with an unstarred lawn; but rather the garden long ago strictly planned, rigidly ordered, architecturally piled, smooth and definite, but later set free, given over to time and the sun; not a wilderness, but having an enclosed wilderness, a directed liberty, a designed magnificence and excess."

"’Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot, While the sweet fields do lie forgot: Where willing nature does to all dispense A wild and fragrant innocence: And fauns and fairies do the meadows till, More by their presence than their skill. Their statues, polished by some ancient hand, May to adorn the gardens stand: But howsoe’er the figures do excel, The gods themselves with us do dwell."

"Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook."

"The basil tuft, that waves Its fragrant blossom over graves."

"I pray your Highness mark this curious herb: Touch it but lightly, stroke it softly, Sir, And it gives forth an odor sweet and rare; But crush it harshly and you'll make a scent Most disagreeable."

"Dreary rosmarye That always mourns the dead."

"Oregano is the spice of life."

"The sweet mouth gathers sweet herbs."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but, when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

"Mrs. Lovett: What's my secret, frankly dear forgive my candor, family secret all to do with herbs, things like being careful with your coriander, that's what makes the gravy grander."

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows."

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance."

"In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?"

"There is an herb named in Latine Convolvulus (i. e. with wind), growing among shrubs and bushes, which carrieth a flower not unlike to this Lilly, save that it yeeldeth no smell nor hath those chives within; for whitenesse they resemble one another very much, as if Nature in making this floure were a learning and trying her skill how to frame the Lilly indeed."

"Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Remember me to one who lives there, He (she) once was a true love of mine."

"The humble rosemary Whose sweets so thanklessly are shed To scent the desert and the dead."

"The green grass floweth like a stream Into the ocean's blue."

"Whylst grass doth grow, oft sterves the seely steede."

"How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!"

"While the grass grows— The proverb is something musty."

"And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. ** * I am the grass. Let me work."

"O'er the smooth enamell'd green Where no print of step hath been."

"A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another."

"We say of the oak, "How grand of girth!" Of the willow we say, "How slender!" And yet to the soft grass clothing the earth How slight is the praise we render."

"Grass grows at last above all graves."

"The scented wild-weeds and enamell'd moss."

"She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears."

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars."

"A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven."

"We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it."

"The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass – I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends."

"We trample grass and prize the flowers of May, Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away."

"Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work — I am the grass; I cover all."

"It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on."

"All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass witherith, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass."

"The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be."

"You could cover the whole world with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through."