ardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural  and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.

ardening is an exercise in optimism. Sometimes,  it is a triumph of hope over experience.

e who cultivates a garden, and brings to perfection flowers and fruits cultivates and advances at the same time his own nature.

f the art of gardening is at last to turn back from her extravagances and rest with her other sisters, it is, above everything, necessary to have clearly before you what you require... It is certainly tasteless and inconsistent to desire to encompass the world with a garden-wall, but very practicable and reasonable to make a garden... into a characteristic whole to the eye, heart, and understanding alike. 

ardening is such a highly individual are that it is irresistible to egocentrics... The word is used in its broadest, most  correct sense and is not to be confused with egoist. It includes not only those who are normally,naturally self-centered, but also those who have been rendered self-centered by circumstances - those who are lonely, timid, shy; those who have a compulsion to express themselves in some art or other; and, especially, those who are ostriches, who are only truly happy when they escape from the bewilderment of daily life by  burying their heads in an interesting, well-ordered, and preferably beautiful landscape.