It is said that some of the finest fiction ever written can be found in garden catalogs!

Garden writers write eloquently, often humorously, almost always passionately of their likes and dislikes, successes and failures, trials and tribulations with various species, hostile climates, the joys and heartbreaks of gardening, their most beloved flowers and the beauty of Nature.

The works of Garden Writers should be on everyone's list of mandatory reading if they truly want to learn about plants and flowers, their cultural requirements, and the specific challenges presented by some species rather than the poetic-prose of garden catalogs that promise an instantaneous Eden!

Here is a list, not complete by any means, of some excellent garden writers.

Christopher Lloyd, Shirley Ross, Allen Lacy, E.A. Bowles, Gertrude Jekyll, Russell Page, Eleanor Perenyi, Michael Pollan, Tovah Martin, Louise Beebe Wilder, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, Edith Holden, Karel Čapek and Henry Mitchell.

I can hardly mention my favorite because there are so many varying styles and so much sharing of experiences that I have collected the works of these authors and many more, and referred to them time after time.

One of my favorites is definitely Henry Mitchell. Here are a two of his famous quotes and observations, combining humor and what I could only call, at times, yogic understanding.

"Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence,"

Here is a portion of the Preface to his book, The Essential Earthman.

"Leisure, slowness, contemplation: in an age of presumed efficiency and professionalism, these amateur virtues are perhaps despised, but they may underlie the greatest joys of gardening, and of life. It is not enough to grow the most beautiful things. It is even better to explore them, to identify with them, and to grow into a rather new consciousness of them"