“To dwell is to garden.”
Gardening teaches patience, humility, and the fact that nature will do what it wants regardless of your plans. These quotes come from green thumbs and casual planters who found something deeper in the dirt than they expected.
“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.”
“To dwell is to garden.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I've come to recognize what I call my 'inside interests.' Telling stories. And helping people tell their stories is a sort of interpersonal gardening. My work at NBC News was to report the news, but in hindsight, I often tried to look for some insight to share that might spark a moment of recognition in a viewer.”
“I am a particular fan of integrative exercise - that is, exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening, bicycling to work, doing home improvement projects and so on.”
“I do the gardening.”
“A person cannot love a plant after he has pruned it, then he has either done a poor job or is devoid of emotion.”
“I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.”
“The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.”
“It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.”
“I loathe gardening, but I love gardens, and I have two beautiful gardens. I can not bear gardening, but I love gardens.”
“Gardening is not a rational act.”
“Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.”
“In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.”
“Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade.”