Gardening Quotes

“A weed is but an unloved flower.”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”
― Claude Monet

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.”
― Horace Walpole

“May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends,
And many books, both true.”
― Abraham Cowley

“It is easier to tell a person what life is not, rather than to tell them what it is. A child understands weeds that grow from lack of attention, in a garden. However, it is hard to explain the wild flowers that one gardener calls weeds, and another considers beautiful ground cover.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it, your neighbors are gonna talk about you ANYWAY.”
― Felder Rushing

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

“The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.”
― Edna Ferber, So Big

“It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“In fact, the only things in the flat Crowley devoted any personal attention to were the houseplants. They were huge, and green, and glorious, with shiny, healthy, lustrous leaves.

This was because, once a week, Crowley went around the flat with a green plastic plant mister spraying the leaves, and talking to the plants....

Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.

What he did was put the fear of God into them.

More precisely, the fear of Crowley.

In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt, or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the plants. "Say goodbye to your friend," he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it..."

Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.

The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth."

- A poem called DIGGING.”
― Edward Thomas, Collected Poems: Edward Thomas

“I want you to understand what you are doing, not just perform tasks because I say so.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“Feed the soil, not your plants.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“Keep an open mind and try some new methods.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“Your soil and plants are friends that benefit from constant care and attention to the details I explain.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“Gardening is easier than it is often made out to be.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“It’s incredible to reflect on how much knowledge and growth power is contained in seeds.”
― Charles Dowding

“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

--The Fruit Hunters”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Quotable Jefferson

“All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.”
― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“She was a woman with a broom or a dust-
pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw
her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you
saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,
cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringer
to their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as a
vacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. She
made mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolled
but twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowers
raised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.
She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in a
night, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk
hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,
to set their frames straight.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“In a world full of roses, stand out like a dandelion in the middle of a green, plush lawn!”
― June Stoyer

“He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K

“I love my garden, and I love working in it. To potter with green growing things, watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up, is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now my garden is like faith - the substance of things hoped for.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams, 10 Books

“There's something satisfying about getting your hands in the soil.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Vocation of a Gadfly