8 Quotes by Benjamin Vogt

Every organism on Earth is here not for us but with us, and the loss of a single species by our hands is an eradication of our own being.

Ultimately, every garden is an ideology.

Of the approximately 93 species of butterfly species in California, --a botanically rich and diverse state—65 species can only reproduce on native plants.

Gardens have deep meaning when they are created and managed to benefit other species, even other humans….Gardening from a larger-than-human perspective can also be empowering. In this time of climate disruption and mass extinction, gardens are becoming places of activism…

Ninety-six percent of songbirds have young that can only eat insects, and 90 percent of these insect species can only feed on native plants.

In our best moments we are no less than a garden, that serves life, not ourselves.

We treat plants like pieces of jewelry, fine dresses, and designer shoes…Instead of celebrating plants as part of the global community, highlighting what each can do for life beyond our own visual pleasure, we focus exclusively on a new leaf color or a new bloom….plants are far more than a visual commodity. Simply put plants are not art. What we do with them, how we honor their life processes as part of creating ecological function—that is art.

Native plants are a threat to an entire Western culture, and an entire industry built foremost on nature as ornamentation for human visual consumption. Native plants represent a gardening paradigm, that instead of focusing solely or primarily on the commercialization of our five senses, explores the deeper issues of why we garden, how we garden and who we garden for.