No Small Thing ~ Alys Fowler

 "It is no small thing to garden in this changing world....When politicians continue to fail us and big business laughs in the face of our futures, the act of stepping outside their nightmares and choosing to softly, carefully tend our gardens so that all the others, from the soil to songbirds, have space too. Well, that remains as radical as the day we first started to garden as humans." 

~Alys Fowler

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alys_Fowler

Artwork from Marcella Cooper https://www.greenpebble.co.uk/collections/marcella-cooper

Overwhelmed by the Gifts~ Norman Wirzba

"To work in a garden is to be surrounded by the mysteries of germination, growth, and decay, and it is to be overwhelmed by the gifts of raspberries, tomatoes, and onions that surprise us with their fragrance and taste. But it isn’t all pleasantries. To garden is also to be frustrated by the disease and death that are beyond one’s control and power. Where did this blight come from? Why won’t this seed germinate? A late frost again? The temptation is always to give up and walk away. But that isn’t really a viable option. If people are to eat, they must eventually return to the ground.......

Gardening is one of the most vital practices for teaching people the art of creaturely life. With this art people are asked to slow down and calibrate their desires to meet the needs and potential of the plants and animals under their care. Gardeners are invited to learn patience and to develop the sort of sympathy in which personal flourishing becomes tied to the flourishing of the many creatures that nurture them. A garden, we might say, is a living laboratory in which we have the chance to grow into nurturers, protectors, and celebrators of life........ To garden well – in the skilful modes of attention, patience, sensitivity, vigilance, and responsiveness – is to participate in the way G_d gardens the world."

~ Norman Wirzba

More at 
https://www.theworkofthepeople.com/person/norman-wirzba

Artwork from Cath Read http://www.cathread.co.uk/

Healing Comes ~ Christopher Bamford

"When we are at home in the garden, tending and nurturing all its plants, animals and minerals, living with them through all the seasons and days, then healing comes upon us like a gift and makes us whole."

~ Christopher Bamford

More at 

https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/books/AuthorDetail.aspx?id=24250

Artwork From Mary Summer

https://www.greenpebble.co.uk/collections/mary-sumner

Backs to the Sun ~ Parker J. Palmer

"We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.” 

~Parker J. Palmer

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Palmer

Artwork from Camille Pissarro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Pissarro

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Born of Dust ~ Daniel Stulac

"We are, quite literally, born of dust. But that does not mean we are only dust. Filled with the breath of G_d, we have a special vocation, too – to serve the garden in which G_d placed us, and to keep it well. As dust of the earth, we are created to be servants of the soil. We are creatures designed by G_d to have our hands dirty. We are intended for cultivation. We are here as the keepers, the pruners, the grafters, the midwives, and the husbands of G_d’s planet. We are of creation, and we are for creation."

~ Daniel Stulac

More at http://www.ecotheo.org/author/daniel-stulac/

The Sun Still Shines ~ Michael Pollan

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” 

~ Michael Pollan

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

Artwork from Mig Wyeth 

https://www.greenpebble.co.uk/collections/mig-wyeth

Ultimately Subversive~ Carol Deppe

" There is nothing we can do that is ultimately subversive - there is no act of gardening that is so profound a rebellion, there is no act of eating that is so potent a blow for food quality and food system sanity - as to take back the corn crop in our own backyards, and grow, breed, eat, and save seed of corn based upon an entirely different set of values.” 

~ Carol Deppe

More at http://www.caroldeppe.com/

Artwork from Clare Leighton

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Leighton

Life Is Not Orderly ~ Natalie Goldberg

  "Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce. In summer, we work hard to make a tidy garden, bordered by pansies with rows or clumps of columbine, petunias, bleeding hearts. Then we find ourselves longing for the forest, where everything has the appearance of disorder; yet we feel peaceful there."

Natalie Goldberg

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Goldberg

Artwork from Valerie Lueth & Paul Roden at http://www.tugboatprintshop.com/

At the Bottom of your Garden ~David Attenborough

"It's about cherishing the woodland at the bottom of your garden or the stream that runs through it. It affects every aspect of life."

~David Attenborough

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough

Artwork from Gordon Mortensen

http://www.artline.com/artists/dealers_artists/index.php?artist=mortensen-gordon

Life in the Ground ~ Charles Dudley Warner

"The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.... It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. .. To dig in the mellow soil... is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground.... There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends to shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine. "

~ Charles Dudley Warner

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner

Artwork from James Milroy http://www.jamesmilroy.co.uk/

The Smell of Manure ~ Doris Lessing

"The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head; two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jewelled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes."

~  Doris Lessing

More at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing

A Garden Planted ~ Ray Bradbury

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

~ Ray Bradbury

More at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury

Artwork from Liz Lyons Friedman http://www.aptosartshoppe.com/liz/lizbio.htm