In a disenchanted world, it's important to get somewhere and accomplish something, but the time spent in a garden gets us nowhere. A garden entices us to slow down and stop, an important dynamic in the soul, and even as we work laboriously in our gardens, for many of us the seasons change, frost arrives, and our work goes into hiding. One of the primary benefits of a garden is to relieve us of ambition, or at least transform our ambitions into the natural rhythms and cycles of the garden. Our philosophies of personal growth can be sublimated in the garden into the work of helping flowers grow.

Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life