Gardening Quotes - Archive

Gardening is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon

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

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

I trust in Nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and Autumn garner to the end of time.
Robert Browning

Begin somewhere. You cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
Liz Smith

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

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

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

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

Giving a knife as a present will cut the friendship - unless a small coin is given in return.
Francis Grose 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

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

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

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

There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.
Mirabel Osler

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.

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

If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
Vincent Van Gogh

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers and never succeeding.
Marc Chagall

The love of flowers is really the best teacher of how to grow and understand them.
Max Schling

The best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but that which bears the finest roses.
Henry Van Dyke

A garden is the best alternative therapy.
Germaine Greer

Work is love made visible.
Khalil Gibran

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
Henry Ford

The more help a man has in his garden, the less it belongs to him.
William M. Davies

Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
William Shakespeare

Monotony is the law of nature. Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises. The monotony of necessary occupations is exhilarating and life-giving.
Mahatma Gandhi

Diamonds are only chunks of coal That stuck to their jobs, you see.
Minnie Richard Smith

Successful gardening is doing what has to be done when it has to be done the way it ought to be done whether you want to do it or not.
Jerry Baker

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
Indira Gandhi

A year from now you may wish you had started today.
Karen Lamb

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

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison

The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
Author Unknown

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden ...
But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
Thomas Jefferson

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin

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

A vision without a task is but a dream,
a task without a vision is drudgery,
a vision and a task
is the hope of the world.
Found on a wall in a Church is Sussex, England, circa 1730

Little flower, but if I could understand, what you are, root
and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
Tennyson

The garden should be adorned with roses and lilies, the turnsole, violets, and mandrake; there you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, garden-cress, and peonies.

There should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic, pumpkins and shallots. The cucumber growing in its lap, the drowsy poppy, the daffodil and brank-ursine ennoble a garden.

Nor are there wanting, if occasion further thee, pottage-herbs: beets, herb-mercury, orache, sorrel and mallows, anise, mustard, white pepper and wormwood do good service to the gardener.
Alexander of Neckham, Of the Nature of Things, 1187

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.
Indian Proverb

A lot of what passes for depression these days is
nothing more than a body saying that it needs work.
Geoffrey Norman

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

Joyful is the accumulation of good work.
Buddha

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.
Sigmund Freud

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman

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

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

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

I want real flowers, perennials which not only grow and change and die, but also rise again and astonish me.  A garden shouldn't just bloom and look pretty; it should develop like the rest of life. Otherwise it, and we, live only to be spaded under.
Emma L. Roth-Schwartz

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
From John Keats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Christmas Quotes I truly believe that if we keep telling the Christmas story, singing the Christmas songs, and living the Christmas spirit, we can bring joy and happiness and peace to this world. Norman Vincent Peale Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves. Eric Sevareid Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree. Charlotte Carpenter Mankind is a great, an immense family. This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas. Pope John XXIII The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has no Christmas in his heart. Helen Keller To the American People: Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world. Calvin Coolidge Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart. Washington Irving O Christmas Sun! What holy task is thine! To fold a world in the embrace of God! Guy Wetmore Carryl Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion. Ralph Sockman There is no name so sweet on earth, no name so sweet in Heaven, The name, before His wondrous birth, to Christ the Savior given. George W. Bethune Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas. Peg Bracken The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. Burton Hillis Holly trees protect against witches and so were often planted near churches or brought into homes at Christmas. Traditional.