Quotes

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, 'What good is it?' If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

--A Sand County Almanac, 1949

Doug Tallamy

“All plants are not created equal, particularly in their ability to support wildlife. Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends. My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.”

--Bringing Nature Home

J. Sterling Morton

"Each generation takes the Earth as trustees."

Warren Buffett

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree

long ago."

Travis Beck

"Designed landscapes already bring together a manipulated physical environment and living organisms. They do not necessarily function as natural ecosystems do, however. They are disconnected, too often wasteful and demanding, or else they simply fail to thrive. When we succeed in creating integrated ecosystems, the results can be remarkable. Life can spring forth, almost unbidden. Wastes can be transformed into resources. The various members of a living community can reach a tentative balance. The built environment can purify water, protect us from floods, and strengthen our sense of well-being."

--Principles of Ecological Landscape Design

Aldo Leopold

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may use it with love and respect."

'I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness."

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Frederick Law Olmsted

"If we analyze the operations of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occur between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. . . . The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system."

--Olmsted Report on Management of Yosemite, 1865

David Abram

"That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere-they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell. They are, rather, the very depths of this living place--the hidden depth of its distances and the concealed depth on which we stand."

--The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

Piet Oudolf

"A plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it is dead."

"All my work is related to trying to recreate spontaneous feeling of plants in nature. The idea is not to copy nature, but to give a feeling of nature."

Cormac McCarthy

“There is but one world and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet these are also the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made."

--The Crossing

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Douglas Tallamy

“Chances are you never thought of your garden--indeed, all of your property--as a wildlife preserve that presents the last chance we have for sustaining plants and animals that were once common throughout the U.S. But that is exactly the role our suburban landscapes are playing."

"Garden as though life depends on it.”

--Bringing Nature Home: How You can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants.