Here are some of my favourite quotes from "Garden Voices Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing" edited by Edwinna Von Baeyer and Pleasance Crawford. While some of the older writings included in this collection are dry and uninspired there are a few great pieces of writing. This was a wonderful winter read!
"We think of plant communities as peaceful. They're not of course: they're battlefield that seem calm only because the skirmishes are fought in silence and slow motion, often underground. A garden is just a lull in the warfare, and it exists only as long as the gardener's authority lasts. We're the arbiters, the little gods. It's a tough job." - Elspeth Bradbury, 1994
"Apple trees were a first demand of Chipman, Winslow and others when they established themselves in New Brunswick. This was for a very good reason - rum and spruce beer were cheap and plentiful, but in gentlemen's houses tastes ran to the more costly and scarcer wine and cider." - J. Russell Harper, 1955
"I believe my brother farmers are the losers by neglecting the garden. I know that I have lost by such neglect, and by the well-known rule, judge others by myself. The garden pays full as well as the field." - A Canadian Farmer, 1859
"One mistake so many people make in laying out a garden is to put it all in front of the house in a series of stiff little beds, which have no artistic beauty about them. Try instead taking the already beaten lines of travel, which have been made by the tramping of feet to and fro, from the barn to the house, from the well to the house. These paths will, probably, have some pretty curves to them, unless the ground surrounding your house is absolutely level and the distance to be travelled very short. In any case try broadening them out wide enough for two people to walk abreast and then make a wide flower border on one or both sides..." -Mary Irene Parlby
No comments:
Post a Comment