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
God Almighty first planted a garden; and indeed, it is the purest of human
pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without
which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks.
Frances Bacon, 1625
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
Gardening is the purest
of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon
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 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
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
A garden is the best
alternative therapy.
Germaine Greer
I think this is what
hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present
at creation.
Phyllis Theroux
Begin somewhere. You cannot build a reputation on
what you intend to do.
Liz Smith
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
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
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
Just
living is not enough ...
One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Hans Christian Anderson
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
Spring has arrived when you can step on seven
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
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
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
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
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither
emotions nor conflicts.
Sigmund Freud
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
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the
metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman
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
