The garden should be adorned with roses and lilies, the turnsole, violets, and mandrake.
There you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, garden-cress, and peonies.
There should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic, pumpkins and shallots.
The cucumber growing in its lap, the drowsy poppy, the daffodil and brank-ursine ennoble a garden.
Nor are there wanting, if occasion further thee, pottage-herbs, beets, herb-mercury, orache, sorrel and mallows, anise, mustard, white pepper and wormwood do good service to the gardener.
- Alexander of Neckham
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-washed palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle - and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
- Walt Whitman
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with elgantine.
- William Shakespeare
For myself I hold no preferences among flowers,
so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.
Bricks to all greenhouses!
Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
- Edward Abbey