quotations about gardens & gardening
Gardening was a subtle process of give and take with the landscape, a search for some middle ground between culture and nature. A lawn was nature under culture's boot.
MICHAEL POLLAN
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
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
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
Though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Charles W. Peale, August 20, 1811
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
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 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
In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener.
ROBERT RODALE
attributed, A Garden of Inspiration
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Nothing discourages the amateur gardener like watching his family eat the entire garden at one meal.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
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
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
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
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
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
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
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