“The autumn garden… It has its beauty; especially, perhaps, a garden with an old orchard attached to it. When I was very small, about four years old, I suppose, a line of poetry entered into my consciousness, never to leave it again:

“ ’Rye pappels drop about my head.’

“I had no idea what rye pappels might be, but they held a magic, an enchantment for me, and when in later life I identified them as the ripe apples of Andrew Marvell’s poem they had lost nothing of their enchantment in the process of growing up.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), English author and garden designer, wrote these whimsical words in her gardening column in “The Observer” in 1951. Most of us probably haven’t thought of Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) since high school English literature class, but there is something enticing about the image of ripe apples (or rye pappels) dropping about one’s head.

The key point here, I believe, is to find something in your garden that enchants you. This sense of magic...