Roses red and violets blew, And all the sweetest flowers that in the forest grew.
- Edmund Spenser
A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar.
Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth.
We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.
- Diane Ackerman
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
Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive.
- John Keats