Garden Quotes


Lily of the valley ... with every tiny pearl-colored bell so carefully wrought.          I was brought up to believe the faeries rang them at night,                                   and for all I know, they still do.
Gladys Taber
Stillmeadow Seasons 1950



PATHS
A thin line of negative space in the wild makes all the difference in the world. I learned that in my own garden last month. I can make the garden magically appear out of the wild by cutting a simple line of order through the exuberance.  Outside Clyde

 The shed has always had the connotation as a forgotten storage hut left at the bottom of the garden; a breeding ground for spiders. Yet used appropriately, they can offer the potential of an incredible space. You just have to use a little imagination. Garden sheds are colloquially referred to as ‘an Englishman’s castle!’ I would have to say that although comedic, it is absolutely true. It is a sanctuary at the end of the garden, a wooden house of possibility where the space is used entirely at the discretion of the owner. Like a king of his own castle. For me it is a place of refuge where I can retreat from the world into a smaller compartment and focus entirely upon painting, making and thinking. (Matthew John Atkinson)

“First year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap” perennial syndrome.  (Noted in TanglyCottage)

"What plant should I put here?", I'm asked often.  It's not the right question, in return I ask, "How do you want to live?"  Tara Dillard - here
 
The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature half way. Michael Pollan
A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant – rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself. Roberto Burle Marx
I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation. Phyllis Theroux
Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite – it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life. Andrew Weil
I do some of my best thinking while pulling weeds. Margaret Smith
If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. “Green fingers” are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart. Russell Page
Regardless of geographical region or culture gardening is perhaps the most common and shared experience of Nature. S. Kelley Harrell
- See more at: http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=26349#sthash.pu0DO58L.dpuf
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. ~George Washington Carver


If you have a plant and a garden, you have everything you need. Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gardening is not a rational act. Margaret Atwood
The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies. Gertrude Jekyll Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. May Sarton
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent
In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own. Alice Walker
Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul. Luther Burbank
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. George Bernard Shaw
Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are. Alfred Austin
- See more at: http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=26349#sthash.pu0DO58L.dpuf

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush- bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn."
- Michelle L. Thieme, August's Crown

"Live in each season as it passes:  breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit."  Henry David Thoreau

Re:  hosta:  the first year they sleep, the second year the creep, and the third year they leap.
The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature half way. Michael Pollan
A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant – rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself. Roberto Burle Marx
I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation. Phyllis Theroux
Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite – it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life. Andrew Weil
I do some of my best thinking while pulling weeds. Margaret Smith
If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. “Green fingers” are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart. Russell Page
Regardless of geographical region or culture gardening is perhaps the most common and shared experience of Nature. S. Kelley Harrell
- See more at: http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=26349#sthash.pu0DO58L.dpuf

The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
In his garden every man may be his own artist
without apology or explanation.
Each within his green enclosure is a creator
and no two shall reach the same conclusion ;
 nor shall we, any more than other creative workers
 be ever wholly satisfied with our accomplisment.
Ever a season ahead of us floats the vision
 of perfection and herein lies its perennial charm.
-Louise Bebe Wilder

Christians are like the several flowers in a garden that have each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other.  (John Bunyan)

You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt. ~Author Unknown

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.

Earth laughs in flowers.

I love Spring anywhere, but if I could choose, I would always greet it in a garden. Ruth Stout

One of the worst mistakes you can make as a gardener is to think you're in charge.

Die when I may, 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

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.

The butterfly is a flying flower, The flower is a tethered butterfly.

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.......

The tiniest garden is often the loveliest.

Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than emperors.

I have never had so many good ideas, day after day, as when I worked in the garden.

What a pity flowers can utter no sound. A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle--oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be.

Anyone who has a bulb has spring.

The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days.

"This has long been my
fondest desire: to own a
piece of earth of modest
but ample size and
there by my house to set
a garden and in it to be
blessed with fresh
flowing water and an
overhanging patch of
noble forest."
~Horace, Italian poet, 65-8 B.C.



Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds.
Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh.
~Judah Ibn Tibbon


"I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some."
-Herbert Rappaport

And my heart springs anew,
Bright and confident and true,
And the old love comes to meet me,
in the dawning and the dew.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Gardens are a form of autobiography. ~Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993

~Rudyard Kipling
What do you call it when worms take over the world? Global Worming.

The research assistant couldn't experiment with plants because he hadn't botany.

What does the letter "A" have in common with a flower? They both have bees coming after them.

What do you get when you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by the diameter? Pumpkin Pi.

What do you call a country where people drive only pink cars? A pink carnation.