Eleanor Perenyi

Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation…

— Eleanor Perenyi

A gift of flowers to a woman implies that she is as deliciously desirable as the blossoms themselves; but there may be…

— Eleanor Perenyi

A garden is a private world or it is nothing.

— Eleanor Perenyi

I have spoken to plants myself, and if pressed for conclusions would have to say that those I threatened did better than…

— Eleanor Perenyi

I love blue more than any other color. I am inordinately attracted to any blue substance: to minerals like turquoise and lapis…

— Eleanor Perenyi

It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience. It takes a…

— Eleanor Perenyi

To see things in black and white is to see the basics, and I would recommend to any designer of gardens that…

— Eleanor Perenyi

September is the time to begin again. In the country, when I could smell the wood-smoke in the forest, and the curtains…

— Eleanor Perenyi

“I ordered a modern purple martin house myself and proceeded to construct a dreadful object: unpainted, it looked like a cheap motel;…

— Eleanor Perenyi

Or perhaps you notice a congregation of ladybugs on a rose stalk. Don't invoke the old nursery saying and ask them to…

— Eleanor Perenyi

Americans resent the vagaries of weather to a degree unknown to other peoples. ... Weather is a force we have lost touch…

— Eleanor Perenyi

[Petunias are] as hopelessly impractical as a chiffon ball dress.

— Eleanor Perenyi

Gertrude Jekyll, like Monet, was a painter with poor eyesight, and their gardens - his at Giverny in the Seine valley, hers…

— Eleanor Perenyi

To garden is to let optimism get the better of judgment.

— Eleanor Perenyi