Richmond Park

"Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness."

(Michael Pollan)

"Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come."

(Karen Joy Fowler)

Paris

"When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldn't find a whore in Paris, they were too busy paying their respects. That was a man-and he still has a show in the west end."

(Hanif Kureishi)

"At five o,clock Paris  always has a current of eroticism in the air."

(Anais Nin)

Paris

"He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing more tragic. Nothing is more sublime."

(Victor Hugo)

"The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortals heart)."

(Charles Baudelaire)

Flossy, Pooh and Panda

"Love Children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us."

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

" Children are living beings-more living than grown up people who have built shells around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love."

(Rabindranath Tagore)

Wakehurst Place and Ripley

"Rest is not idleness, to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summers day, listening to the murmer of water, or watching clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."

(John Lubbock)

"To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its features."

(Thomas Hardy)

Florence

"Sweet childish days, that were as long

As twenty days are now."

(William Wordsworth. 'To a butterfly')

"Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected."

(Louis de Bernieres)

Chenonceau

"The truth is not one of us is innocent. We all have sins to confess."

(Catherine de Medici)

"Courage is as often the outcome of dispair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to loose, in the other everything to gain."

(Diane de Poitiers)

Amboise

"I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but those whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will persue their principles into death."

(Leonardo da Vinci)

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

(Leonardo da Vinci)