Everyone needs inspiration once in a while. After all, inspiration is the fuel to creativity and passion! I learned this the hard way, but let me explain. According to research, exposure to nature and greenery is great for our health and mental wellbeing. But a majority of us live hectic 9-5 lives where we hardly find the time to breathe. Where's the time to go out and reconnect with nature? Well, if that's your question, how about bringing nature home through gardening?
Although my parents are avid gardeners, I couldn't understand what motivated them to dig through the soil and plant flowers, fruits, and vegetables when everything is readily available in stores. I would often question their inspiration and request them to share their garden sayings and wisdom. When I thought I felt inspired enough, I dove straight for the opportunity and planted some tomatoes, marigolds, and hot peppers. I didn't expect them to grow, but I was glad I spent some time reconnecting with nature, which was good for my health and mental wellbeing. My excitement hit the roof when some things I planted grew!
The experience was nothing short of magical, and it excited me to try again. Let's just say I was hooked and wanted to start my garden! Gardening is a process, and like any process, you'll have good and bad days, but any time spent reconnecting with nature is well worth multiple tries. There would be times when a streak of bad days will force you to question your time spent in gardening, but don't give up. Nature, unlike anyone or anything, is forgiving, loving, and kind. I've compiled a list of inspirational gardening quotes and plant sayings to help lift you when you hit rock bottom in the gardening world.
171 Inspirational Gardening Quotes And Sayings
"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine for the soul." Luther Burbank
"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead." Good Morning Quote
"Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air. ." Georges Bernanos
"I know that if odour were visible, as colour is, I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds. " Robert Bridges
"Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are. " Alfred Austin
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"The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous. " Rabindranath Tagore
"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. " Michael Pollan
"Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts. "Sigmund Freud
"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." Khalil Gibran
"Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too. " William Cowper
"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
"Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers. " May Sarton
"From plants that wake when others sleep, from timid jasmine buds that keep their odour to themselves all day, but when the sunlight dies away let the delicious secret out to every breeze that roams about. " Thomas Moore
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"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." Margaret Atwood
"I love decorating my home. I'm a gardener too, so that's usually something I have to play catch up with." Suzy Bogguss
"Garden as though you will live forever. " Thomas Moore
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour." William Blake
"It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees." George Eliot
"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit. " D. Elton Trueblood
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"A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them. " Liberty Hyde Bailey
"I enjoy painting, cutting the lawn and working in the garden when I have time. That's therapy for me. I enjoy working with my hands. " Billy Williams
"The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly. " William Wordsworth
"Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get." H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"A weed is but an unloved flower. " Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered. " Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows. " Doug Larson
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"Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone. " Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"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 must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to " Voltaire
"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
"A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. " Dogen
"I love things that are indescribable, like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia. " Barbra Streisand
"Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade. " Rudyard Kipling
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"The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. " George Bernard Shaw
"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them. " A. A. Milne
"Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. " Richard Brinsley Sheridan
"My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish, or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society. " Andrew Weil
"Every time I imagine a garden in an architectural setting, it turns into a magical place. I think of gardens I have seen, that I believe I have seen, that I long to see, surrounded by simple walls, columns, arcades or the facades of buildings - sheltered places of great intimacy where I want to stay for a long time. " Peter Zumthor
"Sometimes, as is the case of peach and plum trees, which are often dwarfed, the plants are thrown into a flowering states, and then, as they flower freely year after year, they have little inclination to make vigorous growth. " Robert Fortune
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"The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives. " Gertrude Jekyll
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? " Douglas Adams
"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. " Alfred Austin
"It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought." James Douglas
"There's something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy. " Ken Kesey
"It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. " Robert Louis Stevenson
"I've always felt that having a garden is like having a good and loyal friend. " C. Z. Guest
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"He plants trees to benefit another generation. " Caecilius Statius
"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies. " Gertrude Jekyll
"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. " Pablo Neruda
"How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening. " Alexander Smith
"What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. " Charles Dudley Warner
"It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn. " B. C. Forbes
“By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.” Rabindranath Tagore
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"I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation." Phyllis Theroux
"When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited. " Ramakrishna
“Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.” Richard Brinsley Sheridan
"In search of my mother's garden, I found my own." Alice Walker
"One marked feature of the people, both high and low, is a love for flowers. " Robert Fortune
“I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.” Walt Disney
“A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee. ” Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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"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
“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. ” Thomas Jefferson
“You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can’t just wait around, you have to water it and take care of it. ” Bootsy Collins
"Well I do find the beauty in animals. I find beauty everywhere. I find beauty in my garden. " Doris Day
“I love being in my garden. I don’t plant a lot of exotic flora, but I do spend a lot of time outside doing manual labour. ” Jacqueline Bisset
“My extravagance is my garden – it’s the first thing I look at every morning when I wake up. It gives me so much pleasure.” Ina Garten
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“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
“Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization. ” Daniel Webster
“No one will understand a Japanese garden until you’ve walked through one, and you hear the crunch underfoot, and you smell it, and you experience it over time. Now there’s no photograph or any movie that can give you that experience. “ J. Carter Brown
“The most lasting and pure gladness comes to me from my gardens. ” Lillie Langtry
“To dwell is to garden.” Martin Heidegger
“The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him." W. H. Davies
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“All gardening is landscape painting. ” William Kent
“Flowers are happy things. ” P. G. Wodehouse
“Use plants to bring life. ” Douglas Wilson
“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. ” Francis Bacon
“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway. ” Michael Pollan
"Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow. ” Zora Neale Hurston
“Weather means more when you have a garden. There’s nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans." Marcelene Cox
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“I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don’t like tidying up the garden afterwards. “ Jamaica Kincaid
“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. ” Gertrude Stein
“I also like to garden. I grow things, vegetables, flowers… I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids. ” Beau Bridges
“The garden, by design, is concerned with both the interior and the land beyond the garden. ” Stephen Gardiner
“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. ” Joseph Addison
“I need my friends, I need my house, I need my garden. “ Miranda Richardson
“I like solitary pursuits, such as reading or pottering about in the garden. ” Hayley Mills
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“Well tended garden is better than a neglected wood lot. ” Dixie Lee Ray
"Gardening requires lots of water — most of it in the form of perspiration. " Lou Erickson
"Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes." Author Unknown
"In every gardener there is a child who believes in The Seed Fairy. " Robert Breault
"Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it. " Author Unknown
"A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. " May Sarton
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"The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. " Hanna Rion
"There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling. " Mirabel Osler
"In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. " Abram L. Urban
"It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought. " James Douglas
"God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done." Author Unknown
"Don't wear perfume in the garden — unless you want to be pollinated by bees. " Anne Raver
"Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots." Author Unknown
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"Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans. " Marcelene Cox
"Gardens are a form of autobiography. "
Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993
"Science, or para-science, tells us that geraniums bloom better if they are spoken to. But a kind word every now and then is really quite enough. Too much attention, like too much feeding, and weeding and hoeing, inhibits and embarrasses them. " Victoria Glendinning
"Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there. " Thomas Fuller
"Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise. " Michael P. Garofalo
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"Coffee. Garden. Coffee. Does a good morning need anything else?" Betsy Cañas Garmon
"The hum of bees is the voice of the garden." Elizabeth Lawrence
"Let nature be in your yard. " Michael P. Garofalo
"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. " Mahatma Gandhi
"We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike. " Evelyn Underhill
"Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity. " Lindley Karstens
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. " Mrs. C.W. Earle,Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897
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"Essential advice for the gardener: grow peas of mind, lettuce be thankful, squash selfishness, turnip to help thy neighbor, and always make thyme for loved ones. " Author Unknown
"It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season. " Kate Morton
"Anybody who wants to rule the world should try to rule a garden first. " Gardening Saying
"In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener. " Robert Rodale (1930–1990)
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. " Cicero
"I know the pleasure of pulling up root vegetables. They are solvable mysteries. " Novella Carpenter
"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
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"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
"I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. " Reginald Farrer
"Life begins the day you start a garden." Chinese Proverb
"Farming is a profession of hope. " Brian Brett
"Life's a garden — dig it. " Gardening Saying
"There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues. " Hal Borland (1900–1978)
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"A gardener's best tool is the knowledge from previous seasons. And it can be recorded in a $2 notebook. " Andy Tomolonis
"If you've never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden. " Robert Breault
"Creating your own urban farm is as simple as planting your flowerbeds with edibles. " Greg Peterson
"In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it." Frank McKinney Hubbard
"One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides. " W.E. Johns, The Passing Show
"I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow." David Hobson
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"There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder." Alfred Austin
"A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them." Liberty Hyde Bailey
"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul." Alfred Austin
"The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture." Thomas Jefferson, The Quotable Jefferson
"Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything — except itself. " May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep, 1968
"The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all. " Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
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"An optimistic gardener is one who believes that whatever goes down must come up. " Leslie Hall
"The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness. " Dalai Lama
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Gardeners learn by trowel and error. " Gardening Saying
"I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me. " Robert Breault
"My garden is my favorite teacher. " Betsy Cañas Garmon
"Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get." H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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"My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece" Claude Monet
"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies." Gertrude Jekyll
"Weed it and reap." Gardening Saying
"If a tree dies, plant another in its place." Carl Linnaeus
"There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder." Alfred Austin
"A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust." Gertrude Jekyll
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." Greek Proverb
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"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
"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
"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
"Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade." Rudyard Kipling
"Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow." Zora Neale Hurston
"God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures." Francis Bacon
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"A person cannot love a plant after he has pruned it, then he has either done a poor job or is devoid of emotion." Liberty Hyde Bailey
"I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden." Ruth Stout
"The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway." Michael Pollan
"I like gardening — it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself." Alice Sebold
"It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn." B.C. Forbes
"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." Janet Kilburn Phillips
"But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." Edna Ferber
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"Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized." Allan Armitage
"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace." Aldo Leopold
"A garden always has a point." Elizabeth Hoyt, The Raven Prince
"The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land." Abraham Lincoln
"All gardeners know better than other gardeners." Chinese Proverb
"When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden." Minnie Aumonier
"How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence." Benjamin Disraeli
"The garden is the poor man's apothecary." German Proverb
In Summary
I hope these inspirational garden quotes will give you the motivation you need to start gardening and continue, no matter what comes your way. Remember, gardening is a process, and let no one tell you it's an easy job. Being a plant parent comes with its own set of inconveniences, but know that nature is forgiving and will continue to bless you with chances to satisfy your green thumb. Keep these garden quotes where you can read them every day, so when you need a lift-me-up, you know exactly where to turn.