" 'Green fingers' are a fact,
and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers
are the extensions of a verdant heart. A good garden cannot be made by somebody
who has not developed the capacity to know and love growing things."
- Russell Page, The Education of a Gardener, 1962
"Whether you tend a garden or
not, you are the gardener of your own being,
the seed of your destiny."
- The Findhorn Community
"... the public must learn how
to cherish the nobler and rarer plants,
and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom,
or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs. "
- Margaret Fuller
"The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from
scientific knowledge, is love."
- Luther Burbank, 1849-1926
"A seed hidden in the heart of
an apple is an orchard invisible."
- A Welsh proverb
We often hear the playful question:
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
A gardener's version might be: "Which came first: the tree or the seed or
the cutting?"
"Perennials sleep the first
year, they
creep the second year, and they leap the third year."
- Anonymous
"It's true, thought Des Esseintes, pursuing his original
line of reasoning: most of the time Nature is incapable of producing such twisted,
unhealthy species unaided. She provides the basic material, the seed and the soil,
the nourishing matrix and the elements of the plant, which man then raises, models, paints
and sculpts in his own way ... In a few years, man can achieve what Nature, in
her laziness, fails to produce over centuries. There's no doubt about it - gardeners
are the only true artists these days."
- J.K. Huysmans, A Rebours
"Growth is a greater mystery
than death. All of us can understand failure,
we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man
can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth."
- Norman Mailer
"Do you not realize that the whole thing is miraculous?
It is exactly as though your were to cut off your wife's leg, stick it in the
lawn, and be greeted on the following day by an entirely new woman, sprung from the leg,
advancing across the lawn to meet you. Surely, your would be surprised if, having
snipped off your little finger, and pushed it into a flower pot, you were to find a
miniature edition of yourself in the flower pot a day later."
- Beverly Nichols
"Though I do not believe that a plant
will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.
Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
- Henry David Thoreau
The Air Layering FAQ by Bill Hatcher
The Complete Book of Plant Propagation. By Grahan Clarke and Alan Toogood. England, Ward Lock Limited, 1992. Index, 256 pages. ISBN: 0-7063-7079-1.
Green Way Research
Compiled Michael P. Garofalo
How to Communicate with Mike
Red Bluff, California
Propagation - Quotes for Gardeners, 8K, 8 August 1999, Version 1.13.