Gardening Quotes

Joyful is the accumulation of good work.
Buddha

The best insurance policy for tomorrow is to make
the most productive use of today.

It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.
Confucius

 Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can
substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.
M. C. Richards

God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
James Matthew Barrie

Tis better to buy a small bouquet
And give to your friend this very day,
Than a bushel of roses white and red
To lay on his coffin after he’s dead.
Irish Proverb

Correct handling of flowers refines the personality.
Bokuyo Takeda

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be
mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
Iris Murdoch

So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
Author Unknown

 Living Nature, not dull art
Shall plan my ways and rule my Heart.
John Henry Cardinal Newman

And why worry about clothes? Look how the wild flowers grow:
they do not worry or make clothes for themselves.  But I tell you
that not even King Solomon with all his wealth had clothes
as beautiful as one of these flowers.
Bible, Matthew 6: 28, 29, &30

He who wants a rose must respect the thorn.
Persian Proverb

But make no mistake:  the weeds will win: nature bats last.
Robert M. Pyle

I would rather see one happy plant of knotweed than half a dozen aristocratic individuals struggling unsuccessfully.
Marguerite James

A person's character and their garden both reflect the amount of weeding
that was done during the growing season.
Unknown

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
Dennis Breeze

If I wanted an easy care garden, I would have planted weeds
Unknown

If you are not killing plants, you are not really stretching yourself as a gardener.
J. C. Raulston

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.
John Keats

All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little.
Lafcadio Hearn

Wherever man exists, he finds the need to redesign, to recreate the world.
A more beautiful world, purer, sweeter smelling and more colorful.
A garden is probably the spot where the hopes for civilization are best captured.
In fact, man defines himself by his garden.
Anon

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing 'Oh how wonderful' and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out, and start their working lives
By grubbing weeds from garden paths with broken dinner knives.
Rudyard Kipling

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
Edward Phelps

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

'Green fingers' are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart.  A good garden cannot be made by somebody who has not developed the capacity to know and love growing things.
Russell Page

 Who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.
Amos Bronson Alcott

The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson  

I didn't know what narcissism was until I beheld my own narcissus.
Charles Kuralt

A garden should be in a constant state of fluid change, expansion, experiment, adventure; above all it should be an inquisitive, loving, but self-critical journey on the part of its owner.
H. E. Bates

How much the making of a garden, no matter how small, adds to the joy of living, only those who practice the arts and the science can know.
E. H. Wilson

The world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends.
Persian Proverb

Flowers are love's truest language.
Park Benjamin

The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it.
Chinese proverb

To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, and to live as a people, we must have trees.
Theodore Roosevelt

A garden is the mirror of a mind. It is a place of life, a mystery of green moving to the pulse of the year, and pressing on and pausing the whole to its own inherent rhythms.
Henry Beston

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

And 't is my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
William Wordsworth

 To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others,  to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yes, in the poor man's garden grow
Far more than herbs and flowers -
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,
And Joy for weary hours.
Mary Howitt, The Poor Man's Garden

How much the making of a garden, no matter how small, adds to the joy of living, only those who practice the arts and the science can know.
E. H. Wilson

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts

Forsythia is pure joy.   There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or  even knowledge in forsythia.

Bread feeds the body indeed, but the flowers also feed the soul.
The Koran

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.
Benjamin Disraeli

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds,
and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race,
the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
Charles Dudley Warner

To create a garden is to search for a better world.  In our effort to improve on nature, we are guided by a vision of paradise.  Whether the result is a horticultural masterpiece or only a modest vegetable patch, it is based on the expectation of a glorious future.  This hope for the future is at the heart of all gardening.
Marina Schinz

Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
Author Unknown

Gardening is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon

 Gardening takes a plot of land, a hoe and willing muscles. Scratching the soil, harvesting garden fruits, are peaceful results.  With a garden, there is hope.
Grace Firth

All gardens are a form of autobiography.
Robert Dash

..autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
Elizabeth Bowen

Ash before oak, we're in for a soak
Oak before ash, we're in for a splash.
Traditional. Which leaves appear first in spring and a lot of rain - soak, or a little - splash, to follow.

Spring has arrived when you can set your foot on 7 daisies at once.
Traditional

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-sides dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven -
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning

 The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
Hanna Rion

Giving a knife as a present will “cut the friendship” unless a small coin is given in return.
Francis Grose’s Provincial Glossary 1787.

 The trouble with simple living is that, though it can be joyful, rich, and creative, it isn't simple.
Doris Janzen Longacre

 If there's one thing I can say about my garden, it can always surprise me.
David Hobson

  To garden, you open your personal space to admit a few, a great many, or thousands of plants which exude charm, pleasure, beauty, oxygen, conversation, friendship, confidence, and other rewards should you succeed in meeting their basic needs.  This is why people garden.  It can be easy but challenging, and the rewards are priceless.
Tom Clothier

My spirit was lifted and my soul nourished by my time in the garden. It gave me a calm connection with all of life, and an awareness that remains with me now, long after leaving the garden.
Nancy Ross

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
Emma Goldman

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

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
Luther Burbank

Bread feeds the body indeed, but the flowers also feed the soul.
The Koran

When all the chores are done, the avid gardener will invent some new ones.
Anon

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.
Benjamin Disraeli

  A small garden, accordingly, gives its owner a far greater opportunity to express himself ... in a garden any man may be an artist, may experiment with all the subtleties or simplicities of line, mass, color, and composition, and taste the god-like joys of the creator.
H. G. Dwight, Gardens and Gardening, Atlantic Monthly, 1912

As is the garden such is the gardener. A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds.
Francis Bacon

 What do we look for as reward? Some little sounds, and scents, and scenes. A small hand darting strawberry-ward. A woman's aprons full of greens.

The sense that we have brought to birth. Out of the cold and heavy soil, The blessed fruits and flowers of earth. Is large reward for our toil.
Ruth Pitter, The Diehards, 1941

Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.
Lord Orrery, 1749

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at.  I know the beauty of our Lord by it.
Gerald Manley Hopkins

Gardening takes a plot of land, a hoe and willing muscles. Scratching the soil, harvesting garden fruits, are peaceful results. With a garden, there is hope.
Grace Firth

  The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
Hanna Rion

He who plants a garden plants happiness.
If you want to be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden.
Chinese Proverb

Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow.
Author Unknown

Garden: One of a vast number of free outdoor restaurants operated by charity-minded amateurs in an effort to provide healthful, balanced meals for insects, birds and animals.
Henry Beard and Roy McKie, Gardener's Dictionary

 Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
Alfred Austin

Oak before Ash and we're in for a splash, Ash before Oak and we're in for a soak.
Traditional - which leaves emerge first and the coming summers weather.

Gardening is an exercise in optimism. Sometimes, it is a triumph of hope over experience.

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.
Elizabeth Murray

The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic,
always enterprising, and never satisfied.  They always look forward to doing
something better than they have ever done before.
Vita Sackville-West, 1892 – 1962

Gardening is ultimately a folly whose goal is to provide delight.
Deborah Needleman

Spring has arrived when you can set your foot on 7 daisies at once.
Traditional

The home gardener is part scientist, part artist, part philosopher, part ploughman.
He modifies the climate around his home.
John R. Whiting

It is always exciting to open the door and go out into the garden for the first time on any day.
Marion Cran

Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation.
It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.
Karel Capek

Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.
John Evelyn, 1666

A garden really lives only insofar as it is an expression of faith,
the embodiment of a hope and a song of praise.
Russell Page, The Education of a Gardener, 1962

 Gardening is medicine that does not need a prescription ... And with no limit on dosage.
Author unknown

I don't think we'll ever know all there is to know about gardening, and I'm just as glad
there will always be some magic about it!
Barbara Damrosch

None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones.
Forbes Watson

Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them.
Chinese proverb

Cares melt when you kneel in your garden.

Peace is the fruit of activity, not of sleep.
Ancient Egyptian proverb

Holly trees protect against witches and so were often planted near churches or brought into homes at Christmas.
Traditional.

  A garden always gives back more than it receives.
Mara Beamish

The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.
Charles Dudley Warner

 Gardening is a humbling experience.
Martha Stewart

  I also know that we should cultivate our gardens.
Voltaire, Candide

  A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul.
Sadi

  Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination.
Alice Morse Earle, 1897

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
Phyllis Theroux

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.
Heinrich Heine

The Earth Laughs in Flowers
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade.
Rudyard Kipling

In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.
Kozuko Okakura

 Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
Robert Herrick

Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his buttonhole.
Mark Twain

To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
William Blake

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
Chinese proverb

Some lives, like evening primroses, blossom most beautifully in the evening of life.

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

If you would have a lovely garden, you should live a lovely life.
Shaker saying

  He who cultivates a garden, and brings to perfection flowers and fruits cultivates and advances at the same time his own nature.
Ezra Weston, 1845

Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.
Author Unknown

Gardens are inevitably a trade-off of successes and failures.
Rebecca Rupp

 Every garden is a chore sometimes, but no real garden is nothing but a chore.
Nancy Grasby

He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To garden is to let optimism get the better of judgment.
Eleanor Perenyi

When the world wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.
Author Unknown

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 Karstens

When all is said and done, is there any more wonderful sight, any moment when man's reason is nearer to some sort of contact with the nature of the world than the sowing of seeds, the planting of  cuttings, the transplanting of shrubs or the grafting of slips.
St. Augustine

Gardening is the only unquestionably useful job.
George Bernard Shaw

 To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.
Christain Nestell Bovee

At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path.
George Leonard

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
Arnold Toynbee

 The hardest work is to go idle.
Yiddish proverb

Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.
Anonymous

Come my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.
Shakespeare, Hamlet V,i

A good garden may have some weeds.
Proverb

When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 The way of cultivation is not easy. He who plants a garden plants happiness.
Unknown

The Sweet Life: Reflections on Home and Garden

Garden Thoughts: Photographs, Quotes and Inspiration for the Gardener

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations