you mustn't rely on your flowers to make your garden attractive. A good bone structure must come first, with an intelligent use of evergreen plants so that the garden is always clothed, no matter what time of year. Flowers are an added delight, but a good garden is the garden you enjoy looking at even in the depths of winter.
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'd love to have a really flourishing vegetable garden, and I'd love to have a better area for a rose garden or a cutting garden, but I don't. You have to develop a garden in the way that it's meant to be developed.
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
My father would go shopping, and he was supposed to buy loo roll or something, but he'd always come back with some fish or shellfish. And we've always had fresh vegetables from the garden. He is a massively keen gardener, so he grew all our tomatoes, artichokes, asparagus - whenever he wasn't working, he was in the garden.
From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens - the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind's eye.
Inside every one of us is a garden, and every practitioner has to go back to their garden and take care of it. Maybe in the past, you left in untended for a long time. You should know exactly what is going on in your own garden, and try to put everything in order. Restore the beauty; restore the harmony in your garden. If it is well tended, many people will enjoy your garden.
The Japanese garden is a very important tool in Japanese architectural design because, not only is a garden traditionally included in any house design, the garden itself also reflects a deeper set of cultural meanings and traditions. Whereas the English garden seeks to make only an aesthetic impression, the Japanese garden is both aesthetic and reflective. The most basic element of any Japanese garden design comes from the realization that every detail has a significant value.
When a garden is used as a place to pause for thought, that is when a Zen garden comes to life. When you contemplate a garden like this it will form as lasting impression on your heart.
One does not begin to make a garden until he wants a garden. To want a garden is to be interested in plants, in the winds and rains, in birds and insects, in the warm-smelling earth.
In my garden, which is a big garden, I have one part that is my bird garden, and every morning, 365 days a year, they get buckets of food - for the birds, for the squirrels, the chipmunks and the turtles in the summer.
I go five steps in the garden, and I immediately lose track of time... it is a kind of joy in being alive in being in the world. I always found that in the garden. That is what it means to me.
There is no "End" to be written, neither can you, like an architect, engrave in stone the day the garden was finished. A painter can frame his picture, a composer can notate his coda, but a garden is always on the move.
My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public.
I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.
I said (to Daniel Jones), 'You realise I'm always going to be The Guy From Savage Garden'. He said, 'How do you think I feel? I'm The Other One From Savage Garden!'