Quotables: On Gardening

For a garden to be more than the color or form or variety -- for it to inspire and move you -- it must contain three elements that fulfill ancient, primitive human needs: shelter, trails and lookouts, not a garden rooms, paths and views.  These words are removed from the natural world.  They do not speak directly to the feelings you might have when, having hiked all day along a high, exposed ridge trail, you come, as dusk falls, upon a ravine where a knot of trees offers shelter for the night.  When you find such a place you feel good and warm and safe.  Trails produce many emotions, a sense of expectation and a sense of direction.  A lookout brings a sense of power and exhilaration.  This is how primitive people saw nature and how modern people experience nature and even gardens, whether they know it or not.
-- a quote from Harland Hand, as quoted in Garden Paths: Inspiring Designs and Practical Projects by Gordon Hayward