A Treasury of Our Favorite
Garden Quotes & Gardening Sayings

Have favorite gardening quotes or garden sayings to share?
Please send them to us at: gardeningtips@howtogardenadvice.com

 

Earth is here so kind,
that just tickle her with a hoe
and she laughs with a harvest.  
quote / saying by Douglas William Jerrold,
about Australia, A Land of Plenty


When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed
and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. 
If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. 
quote / saying by Author Unknown

Gardens are not made by singing
“Oh how beautiful”
and sitting in the shade. 
quote / saying by Rudyard Kipling

Did you ever think how a bit of land
shows the character of the owner? 
quote / saying by Laura Ingalls Wilder

There are no gardening mistakes,
only experiments.
quote / saying by Janet Kilburn Phillips

Do what we can,
summer will have its flies.
quote / saying by   Ralph Waldo Emerson

An addiction to gardening is not all bad when you consider all the other choices in life.
quote / saying by Cora Lea Bell

My green thumb came only as a result
of the mistakes I made while learning
to see things from the plant's point of view. 
quote / saying by H. Fred Ale

Plants give us oxygen for the lungs and for the soul. 
quote / saying by Linda Solegato

In the spring,
at the end of the day,
you should smell like dirt.
quote / saying by Margaret Atwood

'Just living is not enough,' said the butterfly.
'One must have sunshine, freedom,
and a little flower.'
quote / saying by Hans Christian Andersen

The real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes. 
quote / saying by Marcel Proust

Give me the splendid, silent sun,
with all his beams full dazzling. 
quote / saying by Walt Whitman

To dig one's own spade into one's own earth!
Has life anything better to offer than this?
quote/ saying by Beverley Nichols

Gardening requires lots of water...
most of it in the form of perspiration. 
quote / saying by Lou Erickson

Happiness is a butterfly,
which, when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you will sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.
quote / saying by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The highest reward for man’s toil
is not what he gets for it,
but what he becomes by it. 
quote / saying by John Ruskin

Gardening is civil and social,
but it wants the vigor and freedom
of the forest and the outlaw. 
quote / saying by ~Henry David Thoreau

Those who labour in the earth
are the chosen people of God .
quote / saying by Thomas Jefferson

A garden is never so good
 as it will be next year.
quote / saying by Thomas Cooper

Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm
holding up until your back gets used to it. 
quote / saying by Author Unknown

Why try to explain miracles to your kids
when you can just have them plant a garden. 
quote / saying by Robert Brault

The greatest gift of the garden
is the restoration of the five senses. 
quote / saying by Hanna Rion

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.  My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. 
The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers,
and the dreams are as beautiful. 
quote / saying by Abram L. Urban

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day,
and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny
with a love that nobody could share or conceive of
who had never taken part in the process of creation. 
It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world
to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil,
or a rose of early peas just peeping forth
sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
quote / saying by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse

Just because you've only got houseplants
doesn't mean you don't have the gardening spirit.
I look upon myself as an indoor gardener. 
quote / saying by ~Sara Moss-Wolfe

I never had any other desire so strong,
and so like to covetousness,
as that one which I have had always,
that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden. 
quote / saying by Abraham Cowley, The Garden

Take thy plastic spade, It is thy pencil;
take thy seeds, thy plants, They are thy colours.
quote / saying by William Mason, The English Garden

You can bury a lot of troubles
digging in the dirt. 
quote / saying by Author Unknown

I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God
it would be in a garden at the cool of the day. 
quote / saying by F. Frankfort Moore, A Garden of Peace

Gardens... should be like lovely, well-shaped girls:
  all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations,
seductive surprises and then still more curves. 
quote / saying by H.E. Bates, A Love of Flowers

Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
But only one mother the wide world over.
 quote / saying by George Cooper

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds.  Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world. 
quote / saying by Kate Douglas Wiggin

One of the most delightful things about a garden
is the anticipation it provides. 
quote / saying by W.E. Johns, The Passing Show

If you've never experienced the joy
of accomplishing more than you can imagine,
plant a garden. 
quote / saying by Robert Brault

I have never had so many good ideas
day after day
as when I worked in the garden. 
quote / saying by John Erskine

I appreciate the misunderstanding
I have had with Nature over my perennial border. 
I think it is a flower garden;
she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass,
and tries to correct the error. 
quote / saying by Sara Stein, My Weeds

A society grows great when old men plant trees
whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
This gardening saying is an old Greek proverb

I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights. 
quote / saying by Terri Guillemets

In search of my mother's garden,
I found my own.
quote / saying by Alice Walker

Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.
quote / saying by Sir Walter Scott

Though an old man I am but a young gardener.
quote / saying by Thomas Jefferson

There is no gardening without humility.  Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder. 
quote / saying by Alfred Austin

I'm not really a career person.
I'm a gardener, basically.
quote / saying by George Harrison


Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint,
and the soil and sky as canvas.
quote / saying by Elizabeth Murray

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.
quote / saying by Helen Hayes

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns,
or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
quote / saying by Abraham Lincoln

The man who has planted a garden feels
that he has done something for the good of the world.
quote / saying by Vita Sackville-West

Earth laughs in flower.
quote / saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson

To forget how to dig the earth
and to tend the soil
is to forget ourselves.
quote / saying by Mahandas K. Gandhi

When the world wearies
and society fails to satisfy,
There is always the garden.
quote / saying by Minnie Aumonier

Gardening
is the purest of human pleasures.
quote / saying by Francis Bacon

All my hurts
my garden spade can heal.
quote / saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gardeners,
I think, dream bigger dreams than Emperor's.
quote / saying by Mary Cantwell

All the wars of the world,
all the Caesars,
have not the staying power
of a lily in a cottage garden.
quote / saying by Reginald Farrer

There is material enough
in a single flower
for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.
quote / saying by John Ruskin

A house though otherwise beautiful,
yet if it hath no Garden belonging to it,
is more like a Prison than a House.
quote / saying by William Coles

Nature does not hesitate to interfere with me.
So I do not hesitate to tamper with it.
quote / saying by Henry Mitchell

Love your neighbor,
yet pull not down your hedge.
quote / saying by George Herbert

I suppose that for most people
one of the darker joys of gardening
is that once you've
got started
it's not at all hard to find someone who knows
a little bit less than you.
quote / saying by Allen Lacy

I am fonder of my garden
for the trouble it gives me.
quote / saying by Reginald Farrer

Sometimes the tiniest flowers
smell the sweetest.
quote / saying by Emilie Barnes

Violets smell like burnt sugar cubes
that have been dipped in lemon and velvet.
quote / saying by Diane Ackerman

Forsythia is pure joy.
There is not an ounce, nor a glimmer of sadness
or even knowledge in forsythia.
quote / saying by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants,
I have to do as Adam did in his garden...
name things as I find them.
quote / saying by Charles Dudley Warner

Grow what you love.
The love will keep it growing.
quote / saying by Emilie Barnes

There is simply the rose;
it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
quote / saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson

He that plants trees
loves others beside himself.
quote / saying by Thomas Fuller

There is not a blade of grass that shoots
uninteresting to me.
quote / saying by Thomas Jefferson

There is really no such thing as bad weather,
only different kinds of good weather.
quote / saying by John Lubbock, Lord Avebury

I am not a greedy person except
about flowers and plants,
and then I become fanatically greedy.
quote / saying by May Sarton

To get the best results
you must talk to your vegetables.
quote / saying by Prince Charles

A cauliflower is a cabbage
with a college education.
quote / saying by Mark Twain

I want death to find me
planting my cabbages.
quote / saying by Michel de Montaigne

A weed is a plant
that is not only in the wrong place,
but intends to stay.
quote / saying by Sara Stein

As to the garden,
it seems to me its chief fruit is--blackbirds.
quote / saying by William Morris

A morning-glory at my window
satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
quote by Walt Whitman

Gardening is a kind of
self-prescribed preventative medicine,
good for all ills.
quote / saying by Sheryl London

The garden is a love song,
a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.
quote / saying by Jeff Cox

More and more,
I feel the need for a house and a garden.
quote / saying by Marie Curie

I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden
as one of the most innocent delights in human life.
quote / saying by Cicero

God almighty first planted a garden.
And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
quote / saying by Francis Bacon

One is nearer God's heart in a garden
than anywhere else on earth.
quote / saying by Dorothy Frances Gurney

You're only here for a short visit.
Don't hurry, don't worry,
and stop to smell the flowers along the way.
quote / saying by Walter Hagen

Working in the garden gives me something
beyond the enjoyment of the senses.
It gives me a profound feeling of inner peace.
quote / saying by Ruth Stout

No garden is without weeds.
quote / saying by Thomas Fuller

Most people don't see the sun, soil, bugs,
seeds, plants, moon, water, clouds,
and wind the way gardeners do.
quote / saying by Jamie Jobb

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle
of her inconceivable antiquity
under roses and violets and morning dew!
quote / saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Almost any garden,
if you see it at just the right moment,
can be confused with paradise.
quote / saying by Henry Mitchell

Flowers are our greatest silent friends.
quote / saying by Jim G. Brown

At the heart of gardening
there is a belief in the miraculous.
quote / saying by Mirabel Osler

One of the most delightful things about a garden
is the anticipation it provides.
quote / saying by W. E. Johns

With plants, persuasion is better than force.
quote / saying by Elsa Bakalar

An hour's hard digging
is a good way of getting one's mind
back in the right perspective.
quote / saying by Richard Briers

Gardening is the best therapy in the world.
quote / saying by C. Z. Guest

There is not spot of ground,
however arid, bare, or ugly,
that cannot be tamed.
quote / saying by Gertrude Jekyll

The only thing different about having a green thumb
is that you don't get discouraged by failure.
When something doesn't work,
you try again.
quote / saying by Beth Weidner

The true gardener, like an artist,
is never satisfied.
quote / saying by H. E. Bates

One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use,
is the gardener's own body.
A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support.
It is a way of rejoining the human race.
quote / saying by Wendell Berry

A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.
quote / saying by Richard Briers

A modest garden contains,
for those who know how to look and to wait,
more instruction than a library.
quote / saying by Henri Frederic Amiel

The more one gardens, the more one learns;
and the more one learns,
the more one realizes how little one knows.
I suppose the whole of life is like that.
quote / saying by V. Sackville-West

Every gardener knows under the cloak of winter lies a miracle...
a seed waiting to sprout,
a bulb opening to light,
a bud straining to unfurl.
And the anticipation nurtures our dreams.
quote / saying by Barbara Winkler

I should like to enjoy this summer flower by flower,
as if it were to be the last one for me.
quote / saying by Andre Gide

I am in love with the green earth.
quote / saying by Charles Lamb

Herbs are the friend of the physician
and the pride of cooks.
quote / saying by Charlemagne

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.
quote / saying by Vita Sackville-West

Flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of nature
with which she indicates how much she loves us.
quote / saying by Goethe

Pruning hurts.
Pruning helps you grow.
quote / saying by Emilie Barnes

A garden is a place
to feel the beauty of solitude.
quote / saying by Bob Barnes

One day,
the gardener realizes that what she is doing out there
is actually teaching herself to garden
by performing a series of experiments.
This is a pivotal moment.
quote / saying by Margaret Roach

In his garden, every man may be his own artist
without apology or explanation.
quote / saying by Louise Beebe Wilder

It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. 
You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not. 
quote / saying by W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish, 1936

The richest soil, if uncultivated,
produces the rankest weeds.
quote / saying by Plutarch

Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds
whose seeds are the granary of the birds?
quote / saying by Henry David Thoreau

Your first job is to prepare the soil.
The best tool for this is your neighbor's garden tiller.
If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one.
quote / saying by Dave Barry

You cannot forget, if you would,
those golden kisses all over the cheeks of the meadow,
queerly called "dandelions."
quote / saying by Henry Ward Beecher

Give me odorous at sunrise
a garden of beautiful flowers
where I can walk undisturbed. 
quote / saying by Walt Whitman

What if you have seen it before,
ten thousand times over?
An apple tree in full blossom is like a message,
sent fresh from heaven to earth,
of purity and beauty.
quote / saying by Henry Ward Beecher

In the end, there is really nothing more important
than taking care of the earth
and letting it take care of you.
quote / saying by Charles Scott

I perhaps owe having become a painter
to flowers.
quote / saying by Claude Monet

The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation.
It becomes an obsession.
quote / saying by - Phyllis McGinley

Plants in pots are like animals in a zoo;
they're totally dependent on their keepers.
quote / saying by John Van de Water

The indispensable first step
to getting the things you want out of life is this:
  decide what you want. 
quote / saying by Ben Stein

Growth takes time. Be patient.
And while you're waiting, pull a weed.
quote / saying by Emilie Barnes

God gave us memories that we may have roses in December.
quote / saying by J. M. Barrie

We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. 
How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. 
It makes it so lifelike. 
quote / saying by Evelyn Underhill, Letters

More than anything,
I must have flowers, always, always.
quote / saying by Claude Monet

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.
quote / saying by Gertrude Jekyll

The best place to seek God is in a garden.
You can dig for him there.
quote / saying by George Bernard Shaw

Who has learned to garden
who did not at the same time learn to be patient?
quote /saying by H. L. V. Fletcher

A gardener learns more in the mistakes
than in the successes.
quote / saying by Barbara Dodge Borland

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose,
and the eyes will take care of themselves. 
quote / saying by Robert Louis Stevenson

All gardening is landscape painting.
quote / saying by Horace Walpole (1780)

A garden is the best alternative therapy.
quote / saying by Germaine Greer

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden.
On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth.
I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.
quote / saying by Helen Hayes

There is no gardening without humility. 
Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom
of the class for some egregious blunder. 
quote / saying by Alfred Austin

Weather means more when you have a garden.  There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans. 
quote / saying by Marcelene Cox

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
quote / saying by James Russell Lowell

Unemployment is capitalism's way of
getting you to plant a garden. 
quote / saying by Orson Scott Card

Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God,
nothing seems to me more surprising
than the planting of a seed in the blank earth
and the result thereof.
quote / saying by Julie Moir Messervy

Gardening is a kind of disease.
It infects you, you cannot escape it.
When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden;
you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking
because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed.
quote / saying by Lewis Gannit

The many great gardens of the world,
of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture,
all make the point as clear as possible:
The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.
If you don't want paradise, you are not human;
and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.
quote / saying by Thomas Moore

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Gardening Quotes from our website visitors!

If God makes weeds, why does everyone pull them?
By Wendy LeGrande (4 years old), submitted by Susan Wolfe, Clinton TN

(Q) John: "Why does my dog lift his leg?"
(A) Father: " Because he's not a plant!"
By John LeGrande (4 years old) and Michael LeGrande, submitted by Susan Wolfe, Clinton TN

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"An ornamental garden is as beautiful as a show of fireworks .... it's fireworks without the disadvantages: no explosions, no stench nor smoke, and it lasts for 10 months at least."
submitted by Marc DeCock, Belgium

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"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it (the rose) will also make better soup." H.L. Mencken
submitted by Bill Huebl