Collected Garden Quotes

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. ~ Gertrude Jekyll

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. ~ May Sarton

A garden never knows when its over. ~ Paula Deitz

A good gardener always plants 3 seeds - one for the bugs, one for the weather and one for himself. ~ Leo Aikman

All gardening is landscape painting. ~ William Kent

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind. ~ Abraham Lincoln

All the wars of the world, all the Caesars, have not the staying power of a lily in a cottage garden. ~ Reginald Farrer

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit. - D. Elton Trueblood

Bloom where you are planted! ~ Mary Engelbert

But each spring...a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground. ~ Lewis Gantt

Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence. ~ Henery Mitchell

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ~ Bible, Matthew, 6:28-29

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. ~ Douglas William Jerrold, about Australia, A Land of Plenty

Earth laughs in flower. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every garden is unique with a multitude of choices in soils, plants and themes. Finding your garden theme is as easy as seeing what brings a smile to your face. - Teresa Watkins

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. ~ May Sarton

Flowers are beautiful hieroglyphics of nature, with which she indicates how much she loves us. ~ Wolfgang von Geothe

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than Emperor's. ~ Mary Cantwell

Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity. ~ Lindley Karsten

Gardening is the purest of human pleasures. ~ Francis Bacon

Grass is the cheapest plant to install and the most expensive to maintain. ~ Pat Howell

Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. ~ Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897

He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters this world with a passion for flowers in his soul. ~ Celia Thaxter

I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself. ~ Sir Peter Smithers

If a tree is treated as a living organism, with an understanding of its vital functions, it will be a constant source of profit and pleasure to men. ~ N.T. Mirov 

If you need five tools to solve a problem in the garden, four of them will be easy to find. ~ Mike Garofalo

I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden. ~ John Erskine

I'm not really a career person. I'm a gardener, basically. ~ George Harrison

In his garden every man may be his own artist without apology or explanation. ~ Louise Beebe Wilde

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. ~ Abram L. Urban

In the hope of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. ~ Albert Schweitzer

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~ Margaret Atwood

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~ Claude Monet

It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not.
~ W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish, 1936

It's a sign of wisdom that seeds don't squander their energy all at once, instead calmly waiting
until the time is right. Seeds aren't stupid. - Midas Dekkers

I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day. ~ F. Frankfort Moore, A Garden of Peace

It used to be thought that our love of plants was an impractical but pure passion. But now, in the age of environmental crisis,
we're discovering that gardening is essential to human life. ~ Jacqueline Heriteau

Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not. ~ John Dewey

Just living is not enough...One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. ~ Hans Christian Anderson

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~ Marcel Proust

May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day.
May songbirds serenade you every step along the way.
May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue.
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.
- Irish Blessing

Much may be done with those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away. ~ Charles Colton

Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof. ~ Julie Moir Messerv

One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides. ~ W.E. Johns, The Passing Show

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The best way to garden is to put on a wide-brimmed straw hat and some old clothes. And with a hoe in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig. ~ Texas Bix Bender, Don't Throw in the Trowel

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great challenge for the garden designer is not to make the garden look natural, but to make the garden so that the people in it will feel natural. ~ Lawrence Halprin

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments. ~ Janet Kilburn Phillips

There is a lovable quality about the actual tools. One feels so kindly to the thing that enables the hand to obey the brain. Moreover, one feels a good deal of respect for it; without it the brain and the hand would be helpless. - Gertrude Jekyll

There is nothing more agreeable in a garden than good shade, and without it, a garden is nothing. ~ Betty Langley

Though an old man, I am but a young gardener. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. ~ Henry David Thoreau

To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy,
than to attempt to fully understand. ~ Henry T. Tuckerman

To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this? ~ Beverley Nichols

True friendship is like a rose: we don't realize its beauty until it fades. ~ Evelyn Loeb

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. ~ Abraham Lincoln

What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place. ~ Donald Culross Peattie

When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden. ~ Minnie Aumonier

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~ Author Unknown

When your garden is finished I hope it will be more beautiful that you anticipated, require less care than you expected, and have cost only a little more than you had planned. ~ Thomas D. Church

Where flowers bloom so does hope. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy."  ~ Lope de Vega