Gardening quotes

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

Life begins the day you start a garden.	a Chinese proverb
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
When God blesses the harvest, there is enough for the thief as well as the gardener.	a Polish 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
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.	Abraham Lincoln
I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.	Abraham Lincoln
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)
Gardening is the greatest tonic and therapy a human being can have. Even if you have only a tiny piece of earth, you can create something beautiful, which we all have a great need for. If we begin by respecting plants, it’s inevitable we’ll respect people.	Audrey Hepburn
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
Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.	Emily Bronte
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
No single sort of garden suits everyone. Shut your eyes and dream of the garden you’d most love then open your eyes and start planting. Loved gardens flourish, boring ones are hard work.	Jackie French
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
Where flowers bloom, so does hope.	Lady Bird Johnson
Almost every person, from childhood, has been touched by the untamed beauty of wild flowers.	Lady Bird Johnson
To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.	Mahatma Gandhi
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are charming gardeners who make our soul blossom.	Marcel Proust
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
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.	Miles Kington
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy there is always the garden.	Minnie Aumonier
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
To get best results you must talk to your vegetables.	Prince Charles
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
Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’	Robin Williams
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
If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.	Vincent van Gogh
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.	Vita Sackville
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
One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides.	W.E. Johns
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
Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds. The harvest can either be flowers or weeds.	William Wordsworth
Flowers are beautiful hieroglyphics of nature, with which she indicates how much she loves us.	Wolfgang Von Goethe
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.	anon