Quote

Show me a person without prejudice of any kind on any subject and I'll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener. Prejudice against people is reprehensible, but a healthy set of prejudices is a gardener's best friend. Gardening is complicated, and prejudice simplifies it enormously.

Allen Lacy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Allen Lacy
Person
Friend
Complexity
Admirably
Without
Virtue
Surely
Reprehensible
Kind
Show
Prejudice
Enormously
People
Shows
Chaos
Simplify
Someone
Complicated
Gardener
May
Subject
Prejudices
Persons
Subjects
Gardening
Best
Healthy
Virtuous
Simplifies

More quotes by Allen Lacy

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Plants are the original chemists. Their sophistication makes DuPont and Monsanto look like little kids with chemistry sets.
Allen Lacy
Image
Insects leave (Madagascar periwinkle) Catharanthus roseus out of their diets. So, for that matter, do deer. The reason is that the plants are loaded with alkaloids so potent that they are the source of vincristine and vinblastine. These are drugs important in routines of chemotherapy for treating Hodgkin's disease and certain forms of leukemia.
Allen Lacy
Image
Am I accurately reporting what I see in such a blossom? The answer is no ... and yes.
Allen Lacy
Image
I cannot walk into our garden without constantly being reminded of the friends who have shared their plants.
Allen Lacy
Image
Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.
Allen Lacy
Image
Gardening is in large measure a phenomenon of attention.
Allen Lacy
Image
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
Image
In addition to all its rich offerings to the body and its five senses, gardening engages the mind.
Allen Lacy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Not knowing where your food comes from is a primary form of alienation.
Allen Lacy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We quickly discovered that two kittens were much more fun than one.
Allen Lacy
Image
All gardeners need to know when to accept something wonderful and unexpected, taking no credit except for letting it be.
Allen Lacy
Image
One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener.
Allen Lacy
Image
Crabgrass is aptly descriptive of this hated weed, for it does scuttle quickly through a lawn.
Allen Lacy