GARDENING QUOTES IV

quotations about gardens & gardening

Though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Charles W. Peale, August 20, 1811

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair, and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

AMY LOWELL

Patterns

Tags: Amy Lowell


If we are to include gardens potentially within the arts we would also have to observe that gardening is usually a self-taught skill, with a little help from the "experts". The solitary nature of most garden learning must limit exposure to serious teaching and to other learners--people who might challenge preconceptions and introduce the learner to new ideas and to previous masters of the art.

ANNE WAREHAM

The Bad Tempered Gardener


A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one's personal history and that of one's friends, interwoven with one's tastes, preferences, and character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten, but withal manifest autobiography.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Garden that I Love

Tags: Alfred Austin


One moment alone in the garden,
Under the August skies;
The moon had gone but the stars shone on--
Shone like your beautiful eyes.
Away from the glitter and gaslight,
Alone in the garden there,
While the mirth of the throng, in laugh and song,
Floated out on the air.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"In the Garden", Poems of Love

Tags: Ella Wheeler Wilcox


A garden is never so good as it will be next year.

THOMAS COOPER

attributed, A Garden of Inspiration


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


A garden always has a point.

ELIZABETH HOYT

The Raven Prince


A garden is a beautiful book, written by the finger of God; every flower and every leaf is a letter.

DOUGLAS JERROLD

attributed, The Christian Repository, 1859


The art of gardening is like the art of writing, of painting, of sculpture; it is the art of composing, and making a harmony, with disparate elements.

IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Selections


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 Pruning-Book


No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Garden that I Love

Tags: Alfred Austin


A garden is like a big family. The plants all live and grow together. Some are big. Some are small. But all of them are special. All of them have a story.

MARY A. AGRIA

Second Leaves


Gardening is like the rest of life--there's a fine line between optimism and lunacy.

CONNIE CRONLEY

Poke a Stick at It: Unexpected True Stories


Do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Hamlet

Tags: William Shakespeare


The less help you have in your garden, the more it belongs to you.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


A garden is not a place: it is a passage, a passion. We don't know where we're going; to pass through is enough; to pass through is to remain.

OCTAVIO PAZ

"A Tale of Two Gardens"

Tags: Octavio Paz


In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener.

ROBERT RODALE

attributed, A Garden of Inspiration


Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Garden that I Love

Tags: Alfred Austin


A weed is but an unloved flower.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"The Weed", New Thought Pastels

Tags: Ella Wheeler Wilcox