"Of all the ingredients we employ in
the creation of a garden, scent is probably the most potent and the least understood. Its effects can be either direct and immediate, drowning our senses in a surge of sugary vapor, or they can be subtle and delayed, slowly wafting into our consciousness, stirring our emotions and coloring our thoughts."
- Stephen Lacey, Scent in Your Garden, 1991
"Scents bring memories, and many
memories
bring nostalgic pleasure. We would be wise to plan
for this when we plant a garden."
- Thalassa Cruso, To Everything There is a Season,
1973
"The act of smelling something, anything,
is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of
perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around
from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain,
polling one center after another for signs of recognition, for old memories
and old connection. "
- Lewis Thomas
The Five Senses
"Scent is the most potent and
bewitching substance in the
gardener's repertory and yet it is the most neglected and
least understood. The faintest waft is sometimes enough to induce feelings of hunger or anticipation, or to transport you back through time and space to a long-forgotten moment in your
childhood. It can overwhelm you in an instant or simply tease you,
creeping into your consciousness slowly and evaporating almost the
moment it it detected. Each fragrance, whether sweet or spicy, light or
heavy, comes upon you in its own way and evokes its own emotional
response."
- Stephen Lacey, Scent in Your Garden, 1991
"My
garden, with its silence and
pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me
like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully
through the bars."
- Alexander Smith
The Five Senses
Gardening: Quotes, Poems, Sayings, Lore
Karen and I gardened all day yesterday. We both enjoyed the beautiful iris and rose plants in full bloom.
"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent
can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer
beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family
dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a
Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines
hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories
explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."
- Diane Ackerman
The Five Senses
