Robert Fortune Quotes

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.

When all is said and done, is there any more wonderful sight, any moment when man's reason is nearer to some sort of contact with the nature of the world than the sowing of seeds, the planting of cuttings, the transplanting of shrubs or the grafting of slips?

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

If I wasn't going to be a surgeon, I wanted to be a farmer or grow oranges or something like that. I grow flowers now - orchids. That is something that I find very interesting.

Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

I'm really into gardening.

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.

I've always had an affinity for growing things.

Gardening is not a rational act.

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

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.

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

Anyone who knows me will attest that at any time during the day, you are most likely to find me picking tayberries, 'deadheading' peppermint, or succession-planting shallots. There is almost nothing, really, that I would rather do.

I'm always very interested in breeding. Raising cacti is breeding. My lotus plant collection is breeding. The insects are breeding.

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 am always more interested in people than plants. Nature doesn't make gardens, people make gardens. And the story of a garden is always the story of a person.

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?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I haven't quite got over the miracle that you plant things, and they do sprout up.

Where grows?--where grows it not? If vain our toil, We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.

I had never 'taken a cutting' before ... Do you realize that the whole thing is miraculous? It is exactly as though you 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.

Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants at tree, is more than all.

If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.