85 Best Garden Sayings and Quotes for Plant Lovers *

AD | Regular readers of my monthly garden blog updates will know that I always start my posts with gardening quotes and sayings. As in my January gardening post, for example. But when I’m looking for the perfect inspirational garden quotes for each month, I always make a note of the ones I can’t use as well. And over time, I’ve accumulated a LOT of cute garden sayings! So, I thought this would be a golden opportunity to share some of the garden sayings and quotes for plant lovers that I love best, and which I think are perfect for any and all occasions.

85 Best Garden Sayings and Quotes for Plant Lovers

Quotes posts aren’t a new thing for me – you may have already read my 30 Autumn quotes, 30 Winter quotes, 30 Summer quotes, and most recently, 75 Christmas quotes. As you can see, the trend seems to be more quotes with each post I write… And I know 85 seems like a lot of garden sayings to read through, but I have been collecting them for a fair few years now 🙂 So, let’s kick off with the shortest ones first, shall we?

Short Garden Quotes

If you’re looking for quotes for Instagram, then any of these 20 short garden quotes would be perfect. I particularly love Audrey Hepburn’s, which is very poignant when you remember her war time childhood.

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.” – Oscar Wilde

“A garden is not a place, it’s a journey.” – Unknown

“All gardening is landscape painting.” – William Kent

“Earth laughs in flowers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.” – Gerard de Nerval

“Flowers are happy things.” – P G Wodehouse

“Gardening is the work of a lifetime: You never finish.” — Oscar De La Renta

“Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.” – Unknown

“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect.” – Alice Walker

“In nature, nothing exists alone.” — Rachel Carson

“Minds are like flowers. They open only when the time is right.” – Stephen Richards

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” – William Shakespeare

“The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.” – William Wordsworth

“The greatest gift of a garden is the restoration of the five senses.” – Hanna Rion

“The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.” – Gertrude Jekyll

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” – Henri Matisse

“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” – Janet Kilburn Phillips

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” – Audrey Hepburn

“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” – A A Milne

“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.” – Lady Bird Johnson

Funny Garden Quotes

All gardeners have a well-developed and much needed sense of humour. So, this collection of the funniest 20 garden sayings and quotes definitely struck chords with me. Especially the last three – and I have to hold my hands up to number 20 – guilty as charged! Plus, they’d all make catchy gardening phrases for garden signs* or gardening clothes* to give life to any garden and gardener too 🙂 Head over to Etsy* and you’ll see what I mean.

“A garden is never so good as it will be next year.” – Thomas Cooper

“A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.“ – Michael Pollan

“A man should never plant a garden larger than his wife can take care of.” – T.H. Everett

“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.” – Doug Larson

“A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place but intends to stay.” – Sara Stein

“Dandelions are the genies of the plant world.”- Devon Voyles

“Don’t wear perfume in the garden – unless you want to be pollinated by bees.” – Anne Raver

“Gardening is cheaper than therapy – and you get tomatoes.” – Unknown

“Gardening requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration.” – Lou Erickson

“Good gardening is very simple, really. You just have to learn to think like a plant.” – Barbara Damrosch

“My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn’t take it out of my garden.” – Eric Morecambe

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” – Erma Bombeck

“One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a packet of seeds.” – Dan Bennett

“One sure way to lose another woman’s friendship is to try to improve her flower arrangements.” – Marcelene Cox

“Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Regardless of how bad past gardens have been, every gardener believes that next year will be better.” – Allan Armitage

“The philosopher who said that work well done never needs doing over never weeded a garden.” – Ray D Everson

“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

“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

“You know you’re a hard-core gardener if you deadhead flowers in other people’s gardens.” – Sue Careless

Garden Proverbs

Like the short garden quotes, these 10 garden proverbs make perfect captions for social media. The Spanish and Turkish proverbs are the ones that resonate most with me and yes, I do have the scars to prove it.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” – Greek proverb

“All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today.” – Indian proverb

“April showers bring May flowers.” – English proverb

“Happiness is to hold flowers in both hands”. – Japanese proverb

“He who plants a garden plants happiness”. – Chinese proverb

“Life begins the day you start a garden.” – Chinese proverb

“More grows in the garden than the gardener knows he has planted.” – Spanish proverb

“The garden is the poor man’s apothecary.” – German proverb

“The gardener who loves roses is slave to a thousand thorns.” – Turkish proverb

“To an optimist every weed is a flower; to a pessimist every flower is a weed.” – Finnish proverb

Inspirational Garden Quotes

No collection of garden sayings and quotes would be complete without the wisest of words from some of the most celebrated gardeners through the ages. And it’s amazing how topical their words still are today too. From Cicero, William Blake, Mahatma Gandhi, Rudyard Kipling, Gertrude Jekyll, through to probably the most well-known gardener of our time, who fronts Gardeners World. Yes, it’s Monty Don, whose calming empathy and teachings bring an hour of joy to gardeners and non-gardeners alike, from March to October on BBC2 in the UK.

“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” – Zen Shin

“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

“An hour’s hard digging is a good way of getting one’s mind back in the right perspective.” – Richard Briers

“But each spring… a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.” – Lewis Gantt

“Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.” – Luther Burbank

“Even in this high-tech age, the low-tech plant continues to be the key to nutrition and health.” – Jack Weatherford

“Every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there.” – Unknown

“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

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.” – Luther Burbank

“Flowers are the music of the ground. From earth’s lips spoken without sound.” – Edwin Curran

“Gardening is easy. Stick it in the ground the right way up and most plants will grow perfectly well.” – Monty Don

“Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun… you’re always learning.” – Helen Mirren

“Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.” – Elizabeth Murray

“Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized.” – Allan Armitage

“Gardens are not made by singing, ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.” – Rudyard Kipling

“I always see gardening as escape, as peace really. If you are angry or troubled, nothing provides the same solace as nurturing the soil.” – Monty Don

“I like gardening – it’s a place where I find myself when I want to lose myself.” – Alice Sebold

“I’ve always felt that having a garden is like having a good and loyal friend.” – C Z Guest

“If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.” – Marcus Tullus Cicero

“If you’ve never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden.” – Robert Brault

“In every gardener there is a child who believes in the seed fairy.” – Robert Brault

“I was just sitting here, enjoying the company. Plants got a lot to say if you take the time to listen.” – Eeyore

“Never underestimate the healing power of a quiet moment in the garden.” – Unknown

“Plants are solar powered air purifiers whose filter never needs replacing.” – Khang Kijarro Nguyen

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Unknown

“The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.” – Monty Don

“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 perfect garden provides homes for insects and animals, and breathes life into people” — Emma Metson

“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

“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.” – William Blake

“We gardeners are healthy, joyous, natural creatures. We are practical, patient, optimistic. We declare our optimism every year, every season, with every act of planting.” – Carol Deppe

“We may think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it’s our garden that is really nurturing us.” – Jenny Uglow

“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

My Favourite Gardening Quote

If you’re still reading, well done and thank you. And I’d like to share my favourite gardening quote of the 85 garden sayings and quotes in this post. It’s the one that encapsulates how my garden makes me feel, and it’s a feeling I’d love everyone to experience at least once in their lives too.

“When in the fresh morning I go into my garden before anyone else is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness.” – Unknown

While I’m extremely blessed to have a garden and orchard to maintain, I don’t think you need a large outdoor space to be a gardener. You might prefer to carry out your gardening indoors, or you could be raising all manner of beautiful plants on a balcony garden. Size isn’t proportionate to the joy we get from working with Nature, which is so beneficial for both mental and physical health.

If you’re a fellow gardener, you know there’s nothing like getting your hands dirty, nor the thrill of seeing something grow from a tiny seed that you’ve nurtured devotedly. And if you’re not a gardener, then why not give it a go? You’ve got absolutely nothing to lose and, as all these horticultural words of wisdom show, just look at how much you stand to gain!

Celebrate Your Garden

Every garden proverb reflects a love for greenery, and Custom Pins help you bring that passion to life. You can precisely replicate the leaf patterns and flower shapes of your favorite plants on the pin, and even engrave personalized gardening proverbs or incorporate minimalist garden tool lines.

See more at GSJJ.com.au for fast customization services and a high-quality finished product. And then you can look forward to attaching your new pin to your gardening apron, canvas bag, or coat in a celebration of your garden love.

Which of these 85 garden sayings and quotes do you like best? Are you a gardener? Or do you know one who’d like to read this collection of gardening quotes? Do you know a garden quote that I’ve not included here?

* This is a collaborative post that also features affiliate links but all opinions are my own (see my Disclaimer).