Last Updated on October 18, 2023
Garden quotes to inspire, to motivate, to reflect upon in your garden of life.
You like garden quotes, don’t you? Those little jewels of well expressed wisdom inspire us to thrive and become better gardeners.
I love them too. I have been gathering gardening quotes for years.
I write them down in my “quotes notebook”, and oftentimes after gardening chores I contemplate on them while sitting on the garden bench with a cup of melissa tea amidst the daisies and coral bells, while marveling at the beauty of nature and reflecting on the similarities between a garden and life at large.
Today I want to share my favorite inspirational, motivational, philosophical and some funny garden and nature quotes and proverbs, most of them written by gardeners for gardeners 
, from the mentioned “fat quote notebook”. No matter at what point you are in your gardening journey, I believe you will find them useful. Enjoy!
- “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” – Audrey Hepburn
- “When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves.” – Ken Druse
- “Through gardening, we feel whole as we make our personal work of art upon our land.”- Julie Moir Messervy
- “However big or small your garden is, if you allow nature to touch your spirit, gardening will bring returns of peace, satisfaction, and well-being for as long as you continue to wander the garden path.” – Norman Hansen
5. “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
6. “Gardening is how I relax. It’s another form of creating and playing with colors.”– Oscar de la Renta
7. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” – Claude Monet
Related reading: Add some Zen to your garden with bamboo wind chimes.
Read related: 70 Fun Facts about Flowers
8. “Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.” – Elizabeth Murray
9. “Gardening is not a rational act.” – Margaret Atwood
10. “There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” – Janet Kilburn Phillips
11. “Gardening is something you learn by doing – and by making mistakes…. Like cooking, gardening is a constant process of experimentation, repeating the successes and throwing out the failures.”- Carol Stocker
12. “Gardening is an exercise in optimism. Sometimes, it is a triumph of hope over experience.” – Marina Schinz
13. “All gardeners know better than other gardeners.” – Chinese proverb
Related reading: How to start a potager. Don’t know what a potager is? 😏 Then definately click here. 😃
14. “Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.” – Gerard de Nerval
15. “If a person loves a flower that is the only one of its kind on all the millions and millions of stars, then gazing at the night sky is enough to make him happy. He says to himself “My flower is out there somewhere.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
16. “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” – Helen Keller
Related reading: How to grow calendula (calendula is a nice orange flower (look at a photo with a quote above) with healing properties.)
17. “What’s a butterfly garden without butterflies?” – Roy Rogers
18. “The earth laughs in flowers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
19. “Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!” – Robin Williams
20. “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.” -Thomas Jefferson
21. “If I’m ever reborn, I want to be a gardener – there’s too much to do for one lifetime.” – Karl Foerster
22. “The home gardener is part scientist, part artist, part philosopher, part plowman. He modifies the climate around his home.” – John Whiting
23. “I do some of my best thinking while pulling weeds.” – Martha Smith
24. “I have found, through years of practice, that people garden in order to make something grow; to interact with nature; to share, to find sanctuary, to heal, to honor the earth, to leave a mark.” – Julie Moir Messervy
25. “Gardening showed me the laws of nature in practice and taught that what you sow – you will reap; after fall there will always be a new awakening and growth in spring; life is abundant!” – Garden Lady
Related reading: Learn why gardening is a perfect hobby with many health benefits (backed by scientific research)👍
26. “Seek to understand what draws you to the garden. You may discover greater rewards than the blue ribbons awarded for the biggest pumpkin or the best preserves. You may find the garden becomes a teacher and crop “failures” become lessons learned.”- Norman Hansen
27. “Gardening requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration.” – Lou Erickson
28. “It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.” – George Eliot
29. “When you pray for potatoes, grab a hoe.” – Mrs. Jamieson
30. “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” – Margaret Atwood
Read related:
31. “A good garden may have some weeds.” –Thomas Fuller
32. “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
33. “A weed is but an unloved flower.”- Ella Wilcox
34. “But a weed is simply a plant that wants to grow where people want something else. In blaming nature, people mistake the culprit. Weeds are people’s idea, not nature’s.” – Unknown author
35. “More grows in the garden than the gardener sows.” – Spanish proverb
36. “Every flower blooms at a different pace. Excel at doing what your passion is and only focus on perfecting it.” – Suzy Kassem
37. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin
38. “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” -Abraham Lincoln
39. “The flower replied, “You fool! Do you imagine I blossom in order to be seen? I blossom for my own sake because it pleases me, not for the sake of others. ” – Irvin Yalom
40. “The more help a man has in his garden, the less it belongs to him.”- William Davies
41. “Do not spread the compost on the weeds.” -William Shakespeare
Speaking of compost, 😃
Related reading: How to make your soil fertile naturally (no backyard compost heap needed!)
First I Was Afraid of Gardening and Then I Grew a Pear T shirt
42. “Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes.” – Unknown author
43. “Gardeners know all the dirt.”- Unknown author
44. “Money can’t buy happiness. Except at the garden center.”😃 – Garden Stud
45. “You know you are a gardener when your version of selfies are the picture of your plants.” – Unknown author
46. “Beware of snapdragons!” – Funny garden sign
47. “I’ve always was afraid of gardening. But then I decided to grow a pear.”😃 – Unknown author
48. “I am not aging. I just need repotting.”😃 – Unknown author
Related reading. Learn about starting a garden.
49. “Look deep into nature, and you will understand everything better.”- Albert Einstein
50. “You’re closer to God’s heart in a garden than any place else on earth.” – Dorothy Frances Gurney
51. “God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.” – Francis Bacon
52. “ If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” – Vincent van Gogh
53. “I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society.” – Andrew Weil
54. “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
55. “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” – Greek proverb
56. “Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree’s way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. One life for another.”- Shirley Ann Grau
57. “Watching something grow is good for morale. It helps us believe in life.” – Myron Kaufman
58. “To be able to walk under the branches of a tree that you have planted is really to feel you have arrived with your garden.”- Mirabel Osler
59. “Garden as though you will live forever.” – William Kent
60. “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” – Chinese proverb
Which gardening quote do you like the best? Share in the comments.
And if you found this article useful – be so kind to share with friends.
Images by Jill Wellington, Marion Wellmann, lumix 2004, Lee-seonghak, Rustu Bozkus, Bishu Sarangi, OpenClipart_vectors, Sofia Livarinen from Pixabay and by Garden Lady.
