
Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ wrote, "I have sought tranquility in everything and found it nowhere except in a corner with a book." Books gave me my first taste of heaven on earth and like Jorge Luis Borges, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” My appreciation of gardens and passion for gardening, on the other hand, was consciously cultivated! But it didn’t take me long to discover that I was just like the controversial winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature George Bernard Shaw. His pithy statement “…the best place to seek God is in a garden” is borne out by a ton of books in the library. Gardens and libraries are great places for human development.