quotations about gardens & gardening
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
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
Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
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
A weed is but an unloved flower.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"The Weed", New Thought Pastels
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
Nothing discourages the amateur gardener like watching his family eat the entire garden at one meal.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade.
RUDYARD KIPLING
"The Glory of the Garden", Rudyard Kipling's Verse
Many serious gardeners also place children in the category of garden pests. I'm a serious gardener and I not only allow, but I encourage, children to play in my gardens. I think it's a good place for them to learn that not everything people call bad is bad and that not everything that people call good is good.
WINSTON HARDEGREE
Legacy
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
The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.
MICHAEL POLLAN
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener.
ROBERT RODALE
attributed, A Garden of Inspiration
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"
Every resident of village or suburb who owns or occupies a rod square of mother earth, should have a garden; it pays largely in health and pleasure.
D. D. T. MOORE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Gardens are simultaneously real places and representations. They bring together, in one place, nature and out ideas about nature.
MICHAEL POLLAN
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound!
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
My Garden
A visitor to a garden sees the successes, usually. The gardener remembers mistakes and losses, some for a long time, and imagines the garden in a year, and in an unimaginable future.
W. S. MERWIN
What Is a Garden?
We all go back to the soil eventually, but only the gardener does it while he's still alive.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
For there is no gardening without humility, an assiduous willingness to learn, and a cheerful readiness to confess you were mistaken. Nature is continually sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Garden that I Love
The best thing about gardening is that if you put it off long enough, it won't be necessary.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes