It’s the same thing that makes the best researchers, the best musicians, the best teachers, and the best students:
The great defect of most professional gardeners is that, however well they have been taught a right routine, they do not know the reason of it, and therefore cannot apply it to things outside their experience. They have learnt what they know as arbitrary and isolated facts, just as children learn a number or dates from bad teachers of history; and these facts do not help them to learn anything new. The best gardeners are those who cannot endure that any fact they learn should remain arbitrary and isolated.
(Quoted from page 114 of Studies in Gardening, by A. Clutton-Brock. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916.)
For a brief biography of Arthur Clutton-Brock, click here. For images of or relating to Arthur Clutton-Brock, click here.
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