Gardening quotes

Each month, a gardening-related quote by a famous person is added to this page.

All gardeners know better than other gardeners.	a Chinese proverb
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today.	a Chinese proverb
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.	a Greek proverb
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.	A.A. Milne
What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.	A.A. Milne
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.	Abraham Lincoln
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.	Alfred Lord Tennyson
To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.	Audrey Hepburn (submitted by Sue Sedelies)
I love things that are indescribable, like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia.	Barbra Streisand
How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.	Benjamin Disraeli
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.	Claude Monet
Gardening has just sort of grown on me. I find it therapeutic. And I like smelly things.	Clive Anderson
The English may love gardening and fishing, but they have never struck me as being close to nature. Their way of expression is ‘the hollyhocks are awfully good’ sort of thing, all done in very good taste. The savagery of nature is something they don’t dwell upon.	Denholm Elliott
Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.	D. H. Lawrence
My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn’t take it out of my garden.	Eric Morecambe
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.	Francis Bacon
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.	George Bernard Shaw
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.	Georgia O’Keefe
I think we all have a dream of what it would be like not to work and grow heirloom tomatoes, and I do have that dream. It would be lovely. I do love gardening and all of that, but I also love my work.	Helen Mirren
Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun of them. You’re always learning.	Helen Mirren
Cooking, decorating, diet/self-help and gardening books are guilty pleasures and useful time fillers.	Hillary Clinton
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.	James W. Douglass
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.	Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.	John Steinbeck
My life now is just trees. Trees and champagne.	Judi Dench
To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.	Mahatma Gandhi
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.	Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gardening is not a rational act.	Margaret Atwood
Gardening is a humbling experience.	Martha Stewart
To dwell is to garden.	Martin Heidegger
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.	Oscar Wilde
I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.	Penelope Keith
Flowers are happy things.	P.G. Wodehouse
Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they are tender. They have to be persistent.	Ralph Fiennes
Earth laughs in flowers.	Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.	Robert Louis Stevenson
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.	Robert Louis Stevenson
Gardens are not made by singing ‘oh, how beautiful’ and sitting in the shade.	Rudyard Kipling
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.	Sigmund Freud
Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.	The Koran
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.	Thomas Jefferson
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.	Thomas Jefferson
Until we can comprehend the beguiling beauty of a single flower, we are woefully unable to grasp the meaning and potential of life itself.	Virginia Woolf
I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.	Walt Disney
Sweet, sane, still nakedness in nature! Ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more!	Walt Whitman in Specimen Days, 1882
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.	William Blake
Do not spread the compost on the weeds.	William Shakespeare (in Hamlet)
The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.	William Wordsworth
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.	anon