quotations about gardens & gardening
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
Though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Charles W. Peale, August 20, 1811
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
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
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
A garden always has a point.
ELIZABETH HOYT
The Raven Prince
No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Garden that I Love
In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener.
ROBERT RODALE
attributed, A Garden of Inspiration
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
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
The less help you have in your garden, the more it belongs to you.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
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
I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
PHYLLIS THEROUX
attributed, The Ultimate Book of Quotations
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.
J. M. COETZEE
Life and Times of Michael K
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