Of all the benefits that come from having endured childhood， certainly among them will be the garden and the desire to be involved with gardening. A gardener’s grandmother will have grown such， and such a rose， and the smell of that rose at dusk， when the gardener was a child and walking in the grandmother’s footsteps as she went about her business in her garden—the memory of that smell of the rose combined with the memory of that smell of the grandmother’s skirt will forever inform and influence the life of the gardener， inside or outside the garden itself. And so in a conversation with such a person (a gardener)， a sentence， a thought that goes something like this—“You know when I was such and such an age， I went to the market for a reason that is no longer of any particular interest to me， but it was there I saw for the first time something that I have never and can never forget”— floats out into the clear air， and the person from whom these words or this thought emanates is standing in front of you all bare and trembly， full of feeling， full of memory. Memory is a gardener’s real palette； memory as it summons up the past， memory as it shapes the present， memory as it dictates the future.
I have never been able to grow Meconopsis benticifolia with success， but the picture of it that I have in my mind， a picture made up of memory (I saw it some time ago)， a picture made up of “to come” (the future， which is the opposite of remembering)， is so intense that whatever happens between me and this plant will never satisfy the picture I have of it. I first saw it in Wayne Winterrowd’s garden， and I shall never see this plant again without thinking of him and saying to myself， it shall never look quite like this (the way I saw it in his garden)， for in his garden it was itself and beyond comparison， and I will always want it to look that way， growing comfortably in the mountains of Vermont， so far away from the place to which it is endemic， so far away from the place in which it was natural， unnoticed， and so going about its own peculiar ways of perpetuating itself.