Allen Lacy Quotes

#1. Democracy is fine in politics. It should stay there, and we need more of it. But its political virture is no reason to practice it in the garden.

Allen Lacy

#2. Whether the are splashed with gold or white, striped with chartreuse or cream, or margined in light tones, they are nature's weaklings, and nature is still a matter of survival of the fittest. The survival of variegated plants depends on human intervention.

Allen Lacy

#3. We can plant to suit the needs of the birds and other wildlife that find a haven and a habitat on our home ground, and we can understand that to do so is a moral dictate, not a personal whim.

Allen Lacy

#4. When I need to be precise about a plant, I use its Latin name, even if my nongardening friends sometimes look at me a little funny for using big words in a dead language - or in the kind of horticultural Esperanto that botanical names make up.

Allen Lacy

#5. I know of no common interest that exceeds gardening as a source of lifelong friendships, nor as a means of making new friends almost constantly.

Allen Lacy

#6. Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII of France, had such an aversion to roses that she could not stand seeing one even in a painting.

Allen Lacy

#7. In a well-made garden every day is new.

Allen Lacy

#8. Am I accurately reporting what I see in such a blossom? The answer is no ... and yes.

Allen Lacy

#9. Crabgrass is aptly descriptive of this hated weed, for it does scuttle quickly through a lawn.

Allen Lacy

#10. Not knowing where your food comes from is a primary form of alienation.

Allen Lacy

#11. Gardener's , like everyone else, live second by second and minute by minute. What we see at one particular moment is then and there before us. But there is a second way of seeing. Seeing with the eye of memory, not the eye of our anatomy, calls up days and seasons past and years gone by.

Allen Lacy

#12. We quickly discovered that two kittens were much more fun than one.

Allen Lacy

#13. In addition to all its rich offerings to the body and its five senses, gardening engages the mind.

Allen Lacy

#14. Of course, the character of my garden is also determined by things beyond any human decision, mine or anyone else's.

Allen Lacy

#15. A powerful hand lens [Eschenback Leutchlupe] with a focused beam of light opens up an entire world below the threshold of the ordinary experience of seeing.

Allen Lacy

#16. Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.

Allen Lacy

#17. I suppose that for most people one of the darker joys of gardening is that once you've got started it's not at all hard to find someone who knows a little bit less than you.

Allen Lacy

#18. But there is one place where a person can make choices that will lead in a small way toward greater sanity in dealing with the natural order. That place is the private garden.

Allen Lacy

#19. One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener.

Allen Lacy

#20. I cannot walk into our garden without constantly being reminded of the friends who have shared their plants.

Allen Lacy

#21. Gardening is in large measure a phenomenon of attention.

Allen Lacy

#22. An angel, legend has it, took pity on a little shepherd girl who had nothing to give to the Infant Jesus in his manger. The angel handed her a weed, but first transformed it into this beautiful flower of winter.

Allen Lacy

#23. Plants are the original chemists. Their sophistication makes DuPont and Monsanto look like little kids with chemistry sets.

Allen Lacy

#24. All gardeners need to know when to accept something wonderful and unexpected, taking no credit except for letting it be.

Allen Lacy