Robert Fortune Quotes

I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening.

Gardeners instinctively know that flowers and plants are a continuum and that the wheel of garden history will always be coming full circle.

What would surprise a lot of people about me... I'm a gardener! I have a green thumb. I really like to get into the shrubs, the bushes, and really cultivate.

It's my observation that gardeners and gardening for a very long time have had to take a back seat. Architects are very famous; they've got huge projects. What goes on in and around them has been relegated to a very minor role.

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

My parents owned a plants nursery. We all grew up growing things and planting things and selling things, and I also managed landscape crews.

I'm really into gardening.

We are told that the first part of the process is to select the very smallest seeds from the smallest plants, which is not at all unlikely, but I cannot speak to the fact from my own observation.

I've always had an affinity for growing things.

So maybe I can go back to being a Gardeners' World addict again.

I think I just want to garden - or kill some plants, in my case.

I call myself, 'The Estee Lauder of the garden world.' I'm my own little conglomerate.

You cannot eat apples planted from seeds. They must be grafted, cloned.

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.

The dwarfed trees of the Chinese and Japanese have been noticed by every author who has written upon these countries, and all have attempted to give some description of the method by which the effect is produced.

The garden is my second profession. It's 22 hectares, which is a big garden. I really need it, going from the flower garden, the shrubs and the trees, the vegetable garden, all these things.

I'm huge on spring and summer gardening. I'm really proud of my perennial beds. That's a passion of mine.

I haven't really got a green thumb, but I love gardens and their architecture.

I think that's my strength, that I am an amateur gardener who loves gardening. I've read about it, I've written about it, I've done it all my life but at heart, I'm just a passionate amateur gardener.

What's not to aspire to about how to grow your own fruit and vegetables and plants, and then being creative?

My gardening apprenticeship was similar to the way a chimney sweep is pushed up a chimney. It was enforced by my parents, non-negotiable - it would be weeding the strawberries, mowing the grass.

But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.

The man who wants a garden fair, or small or very big, With flowers growing here and there, Must bend his back and dig. The things are mighty few on earth That wishes can attain. Whate'er we want of any worth We've got to work to gain. It matters not what goal you seek, It's secret here reposes: You've got to dig from week to week To get Results or Roses.