If seed catalogs come, can gardens be far behind? Now catalog season is here, and Gertrude Jekyll reminds us of March when gardens begin to stir:
A kind of sullen dullness pervades all plant life. Sweet-scented shrubs do not give off their fragrance; even the woodland moss and earth and dead leaves withhold their sweet, nutty scent. The surface of the earth has an arid, infertile look; a slight haze of an ugly grey takes the colour out of objects in middle distance, and seems to rob the flowers of theirs, or to put them out of harmony with all things around. But a day comes, or, perhaps, a warmer night, when the wind, now breathing gently from the south-west, puts new life into all growing things.
(Quoted from page 44 of Wood and Garden, by Gertrude Jekyll. Longmans, Green and Co., 1899)
For bibliographic information about Gertrude Jekyll, click here. For images of or relating to Gertrude Jekyll, click here.
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