32 Inspirational Gardening Quotes

Gardening is more than just a hobby; it's a profound journey that connects us to the earth and nurtures our souls. Whether you're a seasoned gardener or someone who's just starting to explore the joys of tending to plants, a little inspiration can go a long way. Dive into our carefully curated collection of 32 inspirational gardening quotes. These words of wisdom celebrate the beauty, patience, and tranquility that gardening brings, encouraging you to embrace every moment spent in nature. Let these quotes inspire you to cultivate not only your garden but also a deeper connection with the world around you.

1. “Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin' comin' up glowin' Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin' in the shade, just ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine. Pure gold corn there, Blowin' in the warm air. Ol' crow nibblin' on the amnythyst seeds. In between the diamonds, Ol' man Simon crawls about pullin' out platinum weeds. Pink pearl berries, all you can carry, put 'em in a bushel and haul 'em into town. Up in the tree there's opal nuts and gold pears- Hurry quick, grab a stick and shake some down. Take a silver tater, emerald tomater, fresh plump coral melons. Hangin' in reach. Ol' man Simon, diggin' in his diamonds, stops and rests and dreams about one... real... peach.” - Shel Silverstein

2. “All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.” - Rebecca Solnit

3. “I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.” - Ruth Stout

4. “Doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it, your neighbors are gonna talk about you ANYWAY.” - Felder Rushing

5. “Live at home” - George Washington Carver

6. “The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” - Michael Pollan

7. “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

8. “Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatever he does. He is in fact a wilderness advocate of a certain kind. It is when he respects and nurtures the wilderness of his soil and his plants that his garden seems to flourish most. Wildness, he has found, resides not only out there, but right here: in his soil, in his plants, even in himself...But wildness is more a quality than a place, and though humans can't manufacture it, they can nourish and husband it...The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.” - Michael Pollan

9. “Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.” - Wendell Berry

10. “For you little gardener and lover of trees, I have only a small gift. Here is set G for Galadriel, but it may stand for garden in your tongue. In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it. It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril; but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there. Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lórien, that you have seen only in our winter. For our spring and our summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

11. “After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her.The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.” - Stephen M. Irwin

12. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece” - Claude Monet

13. “I've got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable form of narcissus.” - Jasper Fforde

14. “Novels and gardens," she says. "I like to move from plot to plot.” - Bill Richardson

15. “Our most important job as vegetable gardeners is to feed and sustain soil life, often called the soil food web, beginning with the microbes. If we do this, our plants will thrive, we’ll grow nutritious, healthy food, and our soil conditions will get better each year. This is what is meant by the adage ”Feed the soil not the plants.” - Jane Shellenberger

16. “Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.” - Eudora Welty

17. “A garden always has a point.” - Elizabeth Hoyt

18. “Mrs Loudon was even more successful than her husband thanks to a single work, Practical Instructions in Gardening for Ladies, published in 1841, which proved to be magnificently timely. It was the first book of any type ever to encourage women of elevated classes to get their hands dirty and even to take on a faint glow of perspiration. This was novel almost to the point of eroticism. Gardening for Ladies bravely insisted that women could manage gardening independent of male supervision if they simply observed a few sensible precautions – working steadily but not too vigorously, using only light tools, never standing on damp ground because of the unhealthful emanations that would rise up through their skirts.” - Bill Bryson

19. “The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.” - Joel Salatin

20. “A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to heaven, or the other place, Boca Raton. If you dig up a clump when no one is nearby and there is no danger of being shot, you'll find that there are scores of little bulbs in each clump, the progeny of a dozen or so planted by the farmer's wife in 1942. If you take these home, separate them, and plant them in your own yard, within a couple of years, you'll have a hundred daffodils for the mere price of a trespassing fine or imprisonment or both. I had this adventure once, and I consider it one of the great cheap thrills of my gardening career. I am not advocating trespassing, especially on my property, but there is no law against having a shovel in the trunk of your car.” - Cassandra Danz

21. “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.” - Alfred Austin

22. “The garden, historically, is the place where all the senses are exploited. Not just the eye, but the ear- with water, wtih birds. And there is texture, too, in plants you long to touch.” - William Howard Adams

23. “I love old gardens best- tired old garden that rest in the sun.” - Henry Bellamann

24. “Gardening is about cheating, about persuading unlikely plants to survive in unlikely places and when that trick is well accomplished the results can be highly satisfying.” - David Wheeler

25. “To dream a garden and then to plant it is an act of independence and even defiance to the greater world.” - Stanley Crawford

26. “Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.” - Beverley Nichols

27. “Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find in it a kind of soothing monotony. It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative's latest example of unreasonableness.” - Christopher Lloyd

28. “I think if we all gardened more, they and all of the other birds that fly in the air above and light in my garden below would be better off. I know that God values them no less than I do. So when I plant in spring I also hope to taste of God in fruit of summer sun and sight of feathered friends.” - Vigen Guroian

29. “It won't be a chore, it will be a garden,' Holena said.” - Jeannie Mobley

30. “Black Creek Burning: “It was a polite, white lie,” Brie whispered. “I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said.” - R.T. Wolfe

31. “One of my favorite dialogue pieces from Black Creek Burning: “It was a polite, white lie,” Brie whispered. “I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said.” - R.T. Wolfe

32. “Often I'll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there's no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountains and of the trees.” - Andy Couturier