quotations about gardens & gardening
Gardens instruct us in the particularities of place. They lessen our dependence on distant sources of energy, technology, food, and, for that matter, interest. For if lawn mowing feels like copying the same sentence over and over, gardening is like writing out new ones, an infinitely variable process of invention and discovery.
MICHAEL POLLAN
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness.
MICHAEL POLLAN
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden,
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI
I am convinced that weeds are just herbs we've not found a use for yet.
TRISTAN GYLBERD
attributed, A Garden of Inspiration
Gardening is a metaphor for life, teaching you to nourish new life and weed out that which cannot succeed.
NELSON MANDELA
attributed, A Garden of Inspiration
I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
oration read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association at the Masonic Temple in Boston, MA, "Man the Reformer"
As everybody knows, it is not so much the eye that summons the gardens of childhood, but the nose. What memoir of childhood doesn't at some point turn on the scent of a sweet pea or a freshly cut lawn or boxwood hedge, to leap the fence of years?
MICHAEL POLLAN
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
The chief objection to gardening is that by the time your back gets used to it, your enthusiasm is gone.
BOB PHILLIPS
Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations
The garden, like life, is filled with good guys and bad guys. That is one of the most difficult things for most gardeners to accept. Gardeners are judge and jury when it comes to judging the good guys and the bad guys in their garden.
WINSTON HARDEGREE
Legacy
A garden rests the soul, and cheers the heart.
R. J. DODGE
attributed, Day's Collacon
No sooner did I bend over and scratch the soil with the hoe than I began to unearth bits and pieces of my past. Memories forever rooted in time were clustered in my garden consciousness like potatoes, waiting, crying to be dug up.... I plant flowers and vegetables. I harvest memories--and life.
NANCY H. JORDAN
attributed, A Garden of Inspirations
I do some of my best thinking while pulling weeds.
MARTHA SMITH
attributed, The Ultimate Book of Quotations
When I die, bury me with a few garden tools, I shall make a garden in the heaven too.
PREETH NAMBIAR
The Solitary Shores
One shapes and cares for the plant tenderly and thoughtfully, working out his ideals as he would in the training and guiding of a child.
LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY
The Pruning-Book
There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.
JANET KILBURN PHILLIPS
attributed, The Garden of Inspiration
We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.
PARKER J. PALMER
Let Your Life Speak
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
MAY SARTON
Journal of a Solitude
I like gardening -- it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.
ALICE SEBOLD
attributed, Inspirations in the Garden
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs --
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.
WALTER DE LA MARE
"A Widow's Weeds"
Gardens. The word is overcharged with meaning;
It speaks of moonlight and a closing door;
Of birds at dawn--of sultry afternoons.
Gardens. I seem to see low branches screening
A vine-roofed arbor with a leaf-tiled floor
Where sunlight swoons.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Stairways and Gardens", World Voices