Gardening Quotes

 

Weeds are flowers too         once you get to know them.|A. A. Milne

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.|Marcus Tullius Cicero

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.|William Blake

Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.|Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.|Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.|George Eliot

Against her ankles as she trod The lucky buttercups did nod.|Jean Ingelow

The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.|Rabindranath Tagore

When the flower blooms     the bees come uninvited.|Ramakrishna

Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh        how beautiful          ‘ and sitting in the shade.|Rudyard Kipling

A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.|Luis Barragan

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.|Pablo Neruda

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

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth and no culture comparable to that of the garden.|Thomas Jefferson

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?|Douglas Adams

In search of my mother’s garden    I found my own.|Alice Walker

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.|Khalil Gibran

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

The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.|William Wordsworth

Gardening is how I relax. It’s another form of creating and playing with colors.|Oscar de la Renta

From plants that wake when others sleep from timid jasmine buds that keep their odour to themselves all day but when the sunlight dies away let the delicious secret out to every breeze that roams about.|Thomas Moore

To dwell is to garden.|Martin Heidegger

Flowers are happy things.|P. G. Wodehouse

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring   who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.|B. C. Forbes

A flower falls            even though we love it; and a weed grows          even though we do not love it.|Dogen

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins            other arts will follow. The farmers           therefore       are the founders of civilization.|Daniel Webster

My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could       so long as he didn’t take it out of my garden.|Eric Morecambe

I like gardening – it’s a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.|Alice Sebold

Garden as though you will live forever.|William Kent

The earth is rocky and full of roots; it’s clay        and it seems doomed and polluted           but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs     throw in a handful of poppy seeds            and cover it all over    and you know you’ll never see it again – it’s death and clay and shrivel         and your hands are nicked from the rocks    your nails black with soil.|Anne Lamott

You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows          but you can’t just wait around       you have to water it and take care of it.|Bootsy Collins

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back        with a hinge in it.|Charles Dudley Warner

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

If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day  you ought to seriously re-examine your life.|Bill Watterson

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.|William Cowper

Use plants to bring life.|Douglas Wilson

Weather means more when you have a garden. There’s nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.|Marcelene Cox

Trees and plants always look like the people they live with      somehow.|Zora Neale Hurston

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?|Wendell Berry

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries  and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.|Joseph Addison

I’ve always felt that having a garden is like having a good and loyal friend.|C. Z. Guest

I love being in my garden. I don’t plant a lot of exotic flora      but I do spend a lot of time outside doing manual labour.|Jacqueline Bisset

How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.|Alexander Smith

There is nothing I like better at the end of a hot summer’s day than taking a short walk around the garden. You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler night air.|Peter Mayle

The more help a person has in his garden the less it belongs to him.|W. H. Davies

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables           nothing          nothing but vegetables.|Gertrude Stein

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.|Jean Anouilh

A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is     to a landscape artist not only a plant – rare     unusual         ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a color     a shape  a volume or an arabesque in itself.|Roberto Burle Marx

A weed is but an unloved flower.|Ella Wheeler Wilcox

He plants trees to benefit another generation.|Caecilius Statius

I know that if odour were visible   as colour is   I’d see the summer garden in rainbow clouds.|Robert Bridges

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

But if each man could have his own house          a large garden to cultivate and healthy surroundings – then    I thought       there will be for them a better opportunity of a happy family life.|George Cadbury

There’s something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.|Ken Kesey

If you build up the soil with organic material      the plants will do just fine.|John Harrison

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

Well tended garden is better than a neglected wood lot.|Dixie Lee Ray

If a tree dies  plant another in its place.|Carolus Linnaeus

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose           and the eyes will take care of themselves.|Robert Louis Stevenson

The most lasting and pure gladness comes to me from my gardens.|Lillie Langtry

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

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden           it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past  thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.|Robert Smithson

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.|Gertrude Jekyll

I like solitary pursuits          such as reading or pottering about in the garden.|Hayley Mills

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit           who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth           and without light nothing flowers.|May Sarton

All gardening is landscape painting.|William Kent

I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.|Penelope Keith

I love things that are indescribable like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia.|Barbra Streisand

Fertilizer does no good in a heap   but a little spread around works miracles all over.|Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I enjoy painting        cutting the lawn and working in the garden when I have time. That’s therapy for me. I enjoy working with my hands.|Billy Williams

One marked feature of the people  both high and low    is a love for flowers.|Robert Fortune

I love planting. I love digging holes          putting plants in       tapping them in. And I love weeding            but I don’t like tidying up the garden afterwards.|Jamaica Kincaid

The Herbs ought to be distilled when they are in their greatest vigor   and so ought the Flowers also.|Nicholas Culpeper

Working with plants trees   fences and walls      if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.|Dogen

I need my friends     I need my house      I need my garden.|Miranda Richardson

I loved to get all dusty and ride horses and plant potatoes and cotton.|Dorothy Malone

My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish     or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society.|Andrew Weil

If a person cannot love a plant after he has pruned it      then he has either done a poor job or is devoid of emotion.|Liberty Hyde Bailey

The garden    by design      is concerned with both the interior and the land beyond the garden.|Stephen Gardiner

Every time I imagine a garden in an architectural setting          it turns into a magical place. I think of gardens I have seen  that I believe I have seen    that I long to see      surrounded by simple walls            columns        arcades or the facades of buildings – sheltered places of great intimacy where I want to stay for a long time.|Peter Zumthor

Gardening is not a rational act.|Margaret Atwood

A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee.|Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I also like to garden. I grow things vegetables    flowers… I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids.|Beau Bridges

Everyone wants instant everything            and they want instant success       but I always think you should treat things in the arts like a garden          and let them grow.|Penelope Keith

I just planted the family vegetables yesterday. You name it      I grow it.|Steve Zahn

I do the gardening.|Ken Livingstone

No one will understand a Japanese garden until you’ve walked through one  and you hear the crunch underfoot       and you smell it       and you experience it over time. Now there’s no photograph or any movie that can give you that experience.|J. Carter Brown

It’s true that I have a wide range of interests. I like to write and paint and make music and go walking on my own and garden. In fact       gardening is probably what I enjoy doing more than anything else.|Viggo Mortensen

I read  go for walks and I love to garden. My hands are such a mess. People think I should have movie star hands      but they’re just gardening ones. Always slightly grubby and with a bit of dirt under the fingernails.|Amanda Donohoe

Sometimes     as is the case of peach and plum trees      which are often dwarfed     the plants are thrown into a flowering states        and then        as they flower freely year after year         they have little inclination to make vigorous growth.|Robert Fortune

I love decorating my home. I’m a gardener too    so that’s usually something I have to play catch up with.|Suzy Bogguss

Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France – that spot where amid verdant plains watered by wide streams     one inhales the purest air of heaven?|Alfred de Vigny

Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells      and then you see something and say      ‘You know    that doesn’t look right’.|Siddhartha Mukherjee

My hobbies are cooking and gardening    especially growing orchids. I love soccer            my husband and I support a British team called Chelsea      and I also enjoy tennis. We have 3 cats.|Juliet Mills

Clarity is the most important thing. I can compare clarity to pruning in gardening. You know       you need to be clear. If you are not clear         nothing is going to happen. You have to be clear. Then you have to be confident about your vision. And after that   you just have to put a lot of work in.|Diane von Furstenberg

Gardening is easy. Stick it in the ground the right way up and most plants will grow perfectly well.|Monty Don

I’m mad about gardening. I have an allotment on the other side of Hampstead Heath           and I keep three hens in my garden.|Deborah Moggach

I love gardening        and I love cooking. I love things like that. I love creating things.|Aaron Taylor-Johnson

I still love farming and gardening and things like that in the summertime.|Blake Shelton

Without doubt           without hesitation   I choose gardening over the gym. I can’t stand going to the gym. It doesn’t appeal to me at all. Give me gardening every time.|Mary Berry

I just think that gardening is about the future       a slow thing  that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.|Monty Don

I really cherish my time at home. As you know  I love my husband so much           but he’s always doing everything for me out here to keep me rolling forward. But I don’t get to do near enough for him. So when I’m at home           I like to cook for him and do some gardening – all that wife-y kinda stuff            you know?|Beth Hart

I’m not a gardener. I don’t have the consistency for gardening  and I have barely enough for an orchard. I don’t embarrass myself. You have to be there tending and weeding. With orchards       you can go through negligent periods and recover.|Bill Pullman

Rock ‘n’ Roll  no roses or gardening.|Tina Charles

I loathe gardening    but I love gardens    and I have two beautiful gardens. I can not bear gardening            but I love gardens.|Elton John

I’m always surrounded by crazy people    but when I come back to the country I’m into my plants            I love gardening      I love bird watching and I absolutely love nature.|Gemma Collins

I spend as much time as I can in my garden         and if I’m not writing songs or gardening            I’m painting.|Chris Rea

The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.|Monty Don

It’s my observation that gardeners and gardening for a very long time have had to take a back seat. Architects are very famous; they’ve got huge projects. What goes on in and around them has been relegated to a very minor role.|Robert Irwin

Cooking         decorating    diet/self-help and gardening books are guilty pleasures and useful time fillers.|Hillary Clinton

I don’t see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets       just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough.|Russell Smith

I put quite a few trees in last autumn. A lot of silver birch and a couple of native trees – just generally doing gardening        putting plants in and hedges in. It takes quite a lot of time and I love it.|Sean Bean

Gardening is inevitably a process of constant      remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting not any fixed moment.|Monty Don

Very early     I thought I would go into music    but I was aware that it would bring a set of obstacles I didn’t find particularly attractive. Also   I’m not a great performer! For a while     I thought I would do something in landscape gardening. But it was always fashion for me.|Stella McCartney

We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic all-round exercise. That is easy to see and evaluate. It inculcates high levels of well-being. That is undeniable and needs little measurement.|Monty Don

I have an armchair interest in gardening   but I don’t like to get my knees dirty. I don’t have a garden.|Nick Cave

I’m not surfing much anymore       but I love hiking and gardening    and I’m always wearing a hat and sunblock.|Carolyn Murphy

I like gardening.|Sophie Okonedo

I cannot remember a time when I was not interested in both gardening and painting. I must have been born with a trowel in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.|Emma Tennant

I got a little house in East L.A. and did the gardening. I was doing some acting here and there      doing my own thing… getting back to reality.|Adam Ant

At home         I relax by gardening            or just pottering.|Jennifer Saunders

There is a direct correlation between gardening and mental health      not just to maintain good mental health but to repair it as well – that’s anything in the gamut from depression to serious brain damage            schizophrenia or autism.|Monty Don

I’ve got really into gardening.|Joe Lycett

I grew up at my grandmother’s house       and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the lawn and weeding     which is what you do when you’re a kid. I loathe gardening    but I love gardens            and I have two beautiful gardens.|Elton John

I’m really into gardening.|Brea Grant

I’ve never really understood the criticism that climbing is inherently selfish since it could equally be argued about virtually any other hobby or sport. Is gardening selfish?|Alex Honnold

I came to London. I spent nine months doing domestic work and gardening because I knew I wanted to get a West End show. So when I was offered jobs in Stoke or Leicester or whatever      I’d say no. Eventually     I got ‘Godspell.’ It was gently building.|Jeremy Irons

We are extremely uncomfortable with the spiritual aspects of gardening       and yet most people feel it in some form or other       even if it’s a sense of connection to the greater world on a beautiful day.|Monty Don

I’ve come to recognize what I call my ‘inside interests.’ Telling stories. And helping people tell their stories is a sort of interpersonal gardening. My work at NBC News was to report the news            but in hindsight   I often tried to look for some insight to share that might spark a moment of recognition in a viewer.|Jane Pauley

I’m pretty good at gardening. It consumes my time         and it feels like I’m doing something constructive.|Simon Baker

All those who run away to ashrams           thinking they are doing something great are just performing daily chores there – cooking           gardening etc. After all       the place has to be run.|Tanushree Dutta

I think we all have a dream of what it would be like not to work and grow heirloom tomatoes      and I do have that dream. It would be lovely. I do love gardening and all of that  but I do love my work.|Helen Mirren

My life is gardening cleaning around the house and power washing.|J. B. Smoove

Cooking and gardening involve so many disciplines: math       chemistry      reading          history.|David Chang

Gardening always has been an art  essentially.|Robert Irwin

Living in New York after 14 years I’m such an outdoors kind of person. I love gardening and building things. I like restoring old furniture.|Paige Butcher

I adore gardening and plan to take it up properly when I have a bit more time on my hands. Until then            I love pottering in garden centres. I’m totally low maintenance. I don’t ask for fancy plants            just basic      long-lasting shrubs that look nice. But I am particular about flowers.|Shilpa Shetty

Overall           the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting  the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement  and the No drama.|J. M. Roberts

I keep myself busy   I read a lot    watch a lot of TV     and do a lot of gardening. I do stupid stuff and I love it.|Akshaye Khanna

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art         from writing to gardening to sculpture            is creativity. I beg to differ.|Roy Blount  Jr.

Gardening gloves are for sissies. I always have dirt under my nails.|Hilarie Burton

I’ve always loved the woods           and I’ve always loved gardening and a lot of solitude and quiet.|Lizz Wright

In the world at large people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden cause and effect       labor and reward     are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension then   the more gardens in the world       the more justice       the more sense is created.|Andrew Weil

Gardening has just sort of grown on me. I find it therapeutic. And I like smelly things.|Clive Anderson

My gardening apprenticeship was similar to the way a chimney sweep is pushed up a chimney. It was enforced by my parents       non-negotiable – it would be weeding the strawberries mowing the grass.|Monty Don

I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job           but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren’t really relevant to my academic work          but were relevant to gardening.|Ken Thompson

The space and light up there in Norfolk is wonderfully peaceful. I find myself doing funny things like gardening       and cooking which I rarely do in London.|Jeremy Northam

I don’t hold that everybody has to love fashion. Some people like gardening.|Steven Cojocaru

Many talk about a guest worker program. I think most reasonable people believe that a guest worker program in the farming industry    perhaps in the gardening and landscape industries        is reasonable.|Gary Miller

I am a particular fan of integrative exercise – that is       exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening         bicycling to work    doing home improvement projects and so on.|Andrew Weil

One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs           the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds            the plant will continue to flower.|Tom Hodgkinson

I could happily lean on a gate all the livelong day          chatting to passers-by about the wind and the rain. I do a lot of gate-leaning while I am supposed to be gardening; instead of hoeing       I lean on the gate           stare at the vegetable beds and ponder.|Tom Hodgkinson

In many ways            theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall – that when the play is finished         it’s done – but now I realise it’s more like gardening; you plant the thing   then you have to constantly tend it. You’re part of a thing that’s living.|Lee Hall

There is some risk to increase birth defects if you do a lot of outdoor gardening when you are pregnant. That can increase rates of toxoplasmosis.|Emily Oster

When I go into the garden   I forget everything. It’s uncomplicated in my world of gardening. It’s trial and error        really. If something doesn’t work  it comes out  and you start all over again.|Emilia Fox

If I’m in the country my big idea is to do nothing. It means talking    it means cooking with the leftovers in the fridge – l’art d’accommoder les restes – it means gardening.|Christian Louboutin

I am so longing to be domestic                  cooking stew            gardening      hopefully having some children         painting         sitting still in one place.|Eve Best

I like the physical activity of gardening. It’s kind of thrilling. I do a lot of weeding.|John Hurt

The profession I have keeps dragging me into drama and taking me away from baking       flowering and gardening.|Lykke Li

A generation before it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later   it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910         Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down     build his dream house         and maybe do some gardening.|Kage Baker

From my earliest memories I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale’s Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge      well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner.|Joel Salatin

Because I am really interested in gardening         I do really interesting plants          not even always flowers. And because I have grown them I really know them like friends. I paint everything from exotic orchids to rosehips growing wild in a hedge. They just have to speak to me.|Emma Tennant

Software is like gardening – one day I’ll go behind the shed and clean up. But if nobody ever goes there            does it matter a lot?|Mike Krieger

Perhaps the CDC should quit spending money on things like jazzercise         urban gardening       and massage therapy and direct that money to where it’s appropriate in protecting the health of the American people.|Cory Gardner

There’s something about beautiful moments in sports that alters our experience of time. And I’d say the same thing about poetry and gardening. Gardening slows me down. I want to stop and observe everything.|Ross Gay

I love Michel Roux  Jr.       and James Martin – the chefs who are experts in their own right         like Rick Stein on fish. But I don’t watch them very much because I don’t think it’s fair for my husband to be in a total food environment all the time! So we watch programmes about gardening more.|Mary Berry

My partner loves gardening and beekeeping and chickens and all that stuff.|Jillian Michaels

Gardening is not my thing. You’re digging in the dirt    and then a couple of months later something happens.|Jillian Michaels

I like to encourage people interested in gardening or planting to begin with a simple herb garden. Even if you live in a small apartment      you can have some herb pots.|Anna Getty

I find myself listening to Talk Talk on repeat while I’m doing gardening in upstate New York. Their music is so languid   and I just love his voice.|Parker Posey

Mid-afternoon          I’ll go out and do the household errands  come home   do my gardening      go for an evening walk.|Diana Gabaldon

I think in the same way when I’m cooking           when I’m gardening when I’m choosing fabrics. It’s a way of living.|Dries van Noten

I’m huge on spring and summer gardening. I’m really proud of my perennial beds. That’s a passion of mine.|Steve Zahn

My parents were/are straight-edge hippies. Mom roamed around gardening so we would have fresh food    and Dad was on wood-chopping duty to heat our passive solar home that they figured out how to design and build together. I was the kid with green peppers in my lunch   and I liked them!|Tara Stiles

I like to keep fit        and when not gardening or singing solo or in a choir    I cycle           play tennis            swim  dance and practise yoga.|Jane Hawking

Gardening is one of my enduring  favourite       and most rewarding pastimes.|Jane Hawking

I don’t think about being the Colin Firth of the gardening world. I live a very insular world based around my family and my home     and to them I’m not the Colin Firth of anything.|Monty Don

We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic all-round exercise.|Monty Don

I think that’s my strength     that I am an amateur gardener who loves gardening. I’ve read about it            I’ve written about it I’ve done it all my life but at heart I’m just a passionate amateur gardener.|Monty Don

I think we put far too much interest in trying to get ten to 20 year olds interested in gardening. I think you should do everything you can to try and get them interested up to the age of 10.|Monty Don

I find I am growing fonder of gardening  listening to music and reading.|Sharmila Tagore

Gardening and my culinary skills keep me busy.|Sowcar Janaki

When I’m outside gardening           it can be so inspiring. I think of words and melodies. It’s peaceful. Every singer-songwriter should find something outside of music that makes them as happy as gardening makes me.|Amanda Shires

There were points when I’ve thought about getting into landscape gardening or getting back to illustrating     but mostly with a bit of a chip on my shoulder.|Paul Kaye

You have to put your partner and family at the top of the list and there must be downtime – time for gardening       cooking time book reading time.|Shirley Ballas

As an athlete if you train your body but don’t fuel it the right way      that doesn’t make much sense. Adopting a plant-based diet with the right amount of proteins that came from the right places was the way to go. I also just love gardening.|Marc Gasol

I’d love to take up organic vegetable gardening   do anything that involves learning.|Sudha Kongara

Besides gardening    I love to sketch and to sing.|Rekha

I learned a lot while labouring and gardening. Whenever I feel tired and want to go home while doing TV work        I just think how tough groundworking is.|Gethin Jones