There’s little more rewarding than seeing your garden efforts in bloom. Or maybe it’s walking in a vibrant field of cheery sunflowers. Or you’re exploring interesting plant varieties in a beautiful botanical garden.
Envision breathing deeply into a velvety, fragrant rose.
No matter which kind of garden experience you prefer, gardens of all kinds are restorative!
If you are drawn to gardens as I am, you’ll love these inspirational garden quotes.
Just browse this extensive collection of garden sayings and quotes that are sure to make you think about gardeningโand life…long beyond spent blooms.
Editors Note: We updated this post in June 2022 with more garden quotes to keep it fresh!
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โThe 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.โ
โAlfred Austin
โI 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.โ
โDavid Hobson
โThe love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.โ
โGertrude Jekyll
โI like gardening โ it’s a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.โ
โAlice Sebold
โMy garden is my most beautiful masterpieceโ
โClaude Monet
“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
โVincent van Gogh
“The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth, One is nearer Godโs Heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth.”
โDorothy Frances Gurney
Best Garden Sayings and Quotes
โFlowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.โ
โLuther Burbank
โIf you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. โ
โMarcus Tullius Cicero
โTo plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.โ
โAudrey Hepburn
โI am more myself in a garden than anywhere else on Earth.โ
โDoug Green
“Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with the dream.”
โJosephine Neuse
โGardening is the work of a lifetime: you never finish.โ
โOscar De La Renta
โThere are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.โ
โJanet Kilburn Phillips
โEverything 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.โ
โMay Sarton
โShow me your garden and I shall tell you what you are. โ
โAlfred Austin
โThere are always flowers for those who want to see them.โ
Related: Discover the Best Botanical Gardens Around the World
โGarden as though you will live forever.โ
โWilliam Kent
โA garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.โ
โGertrude Jekyll
โIn the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.โ
โMargaret Atwood
More Famous Garden Quotes
โI love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.โ
โRuth Stout
โGardens. I think, dream bigger than emperors.โ
โMary Cantwell
โTo 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.”
โWilliam Blake
โGardening adds years to your life and life to your years.โ
โUnknown
โA 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.โ
โLiberty Hyde Bailey
โIt was such a pleasure to sink oneโs hand into the warm earth, to feel at oneโs fingertips the possibilities of the new season.โ
โKate Morton
โIf you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
โMarcus Tullius Cicero
โThe garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.โ
Gardening Quotes for Inspiration
“Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.”
โElizabeth Murray
โIf youโve never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden.โ
โRobert Brault
โLife begins the day you start a garden.โ
โChinese proverb
โRemember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.โ
โH. Jackson Brown, Jr.
โHelp us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.โ
โMay Sarton
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.”
โAlfred Lord Tennyson
โThere are no happier folks than plant lovers and none more generous than those who garden.โ
โErnest Wilson
โThrough gardening, we feel whole as we make our personal work of art upon our land.โ
โJulie Moir Messervy
โThe best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.โ
โGeorge Bernard Shaw
โWhat is a weed? A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.โ
โRalph Waldo Emerson
“We may think we are nurturing our garden, but of course, it is our garden that is really nurturing us.”
โJenny Uglow
“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me, there lay an invincible summer.”
โAlbert Camus
“I feel like I should clean the house, so I’m going to my garden to play until the feeling passes.”
โUnknown
“If we could see the miracle of a single flower, clearly our whole life would change.”
โGautama Buddha
“Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.”
โUnknown
“Procrastiplanting (verb): When you have a million things to do but ignore them all and tend to your plants instead.”
โUnknown
“Growing your own tomatoes is the best way to devote 3 months of your life to saving $2.17.”
โUnknown
“There is something infinitely healing about the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
โRachel Carson
“The seed has all its potential within it, the gardener simply helps unlock it.”
โThe Well-Gardened Mind
“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. Through gardening, we feel whole a we make our personal work of art upon our land.”
โJuly Moir Messervy, The Inward Garden
“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.”
โAnn Bradstreet
“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”
โVincent van Gogh
“The creation of a thousand forests is one acorn.”
โRalph Waldo Emerson
“A garden is not a place. It’s a journey.”
โMonty Don
“Did you know that if you garden naked, your neighbours will build a privacy fence at no cost to you?”
โUnknown
“To forget how to dig the earth and tend to the soil is to forget ourselves.”
โMahatma Ghandi
“When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves.”
โKen Druse
“A garden is a friend you can visit any time.”
โOkakura Kakuzo
“You know that tingly feeing you get when you enter a plant shop? It’s the commonsense leaving your body.”
โUnknown
“A gardener learns more in the mistakes than in the successes.”
โBarbara Dodge Borland
“Manโdespite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishmentsโowes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
โPaul Harvey
More Gardening Quotes
“My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant’s point of view.”
โH. Fred Dale
“Need money. Not homeless, Wife keeps buying plants.”
โAnonymous
“And into the garden I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”
โAnonymous
“I don’t care what people think about me. A long as my plants like me.”
โUnknown
“It’s only when you look at a flower really close up that you can truly appreciate how beautiful it is โ and how many little creepy-crawlies live on it.
โChris Madden
“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.”
โAbram L. Urban
“Advice for the Gardener: Grow PEAS of mind, LETTUCE be thankful, SQUASH selfishness, TURNIP to hep they neighbor, and always make THYME for loved ones.”
โUnknown
“I was just sittin’ here enjoyin’ the company. Plants got a lot to say, if you take the time to listen.”
โEeyore
“Grow through what you go through.”
โAnonymous
Count the garden by the flowers, never the leaves that fall. Count your life with the smiles and not the tears that roll.
โMark Gutteridge
Whoever said money can’t buy happiness has clearly never been to a garden center!
โAnonymous
There will be people who say you buy too many plants. Those are not your people.
โAnonymous
Don’t tell secrets in the garden. The potatoes have eyes, the corn has ears, and the beanstalk.
โAnonymous
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.
โAnonymous
You know if you don’t rake the leaves they turn into soil, right? They don’t break into your house and drink all your wine or anything.
โAnonymous
All gardens are a form of autobiography.
โRobert Dash
Mary, Mary, quite contrary / How does your garden grow? / With silver bells and cockleshells / And pretty maids all in a row.
โTim Hart And Friends
Lettuce romaine in the garden forever.
โAnonymous
Final Thoughts on Inspirational Garden Quotes
I hope these inspirational garden quotes have given you a little reprieve from every day life. Sometimes, a little garden therapy is all you need to put things in perspective.
Do you have a favorite garden quote listed among these Inspirational Garden Quotes? Which one is it? Or, if I’ve missed a garden saying that you love, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll add it in!
I could read these every day!
Me too! I love that garden quotes can be so uplifting.
Many of these people are clearly my kind of people! I think the two themes that emerge from all these quotes are the joy of nurturing something, of watching it grow, of the work with earth and seed and plant and how satisfying it is … and on the other hand, the joy that comes from creating beauty through gardening. I particularly love the Marcus Tullius Cicero quote about having a garden and a library, and that being all one needs. As a true book lover, this resonates with me enormously!
I share your love of gardening, Kavita. And it’s funny how book-lovers and gardeners seem to go hand-in-hand…but they do!