By the time one is eighty, it is said, there is no longer a tug of war in the garden with the May flowers hauling like mad against the claims of the other months. All is at last in balance and all is serene. The gardener is usually dead, of course. – Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman, 1981

A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. – Charles Lamb, 1830

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought. – James Douglas, Down Shoe Lane