Famous Quotes on Gardening and Well-Being

Caring for plants in a garden is a wonderful way to care for yourself, as well. Research shows that the process of gardening benefits well-being in many ways, from reducing stress and lowering disease risk to increasing life satisfaction and promoting learning. Let these famous quotes on gardening and well-being motivate you to spend some time working in a garden:

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

“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

“Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of humanity.” – Daniel Webster

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

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

“My garden is my favorite teacher.” – Betsy Garmon

“I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit.” – Reginald Farrer

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

“The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.” – Wendell Berry

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

“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 Bailey

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” – Claude Monet

“Green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart.” – Russell Page

“The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.” – George Bernard Shaw

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

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

“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

“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

“We must cultivate our own garden.” – Voltaire

“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

“Use plants to bring life.” – Douglas Wilson

“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.” – Thomas Jefferson

“There’s something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.” – Ken Kesey

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

“How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.” – Alexander Smith

“I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.” – Phyllis Theroux

“I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations.” – Penelope Keith

“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 Marx

“All gardening is landscape painting.” – William Kent

“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

“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

“In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener.” – Robert Rodale

“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.” – Wendell Berry

“One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides.” – W.E. Johns

“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

“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” – Sigmund Freud

“Garden as though you will live forever.” – Thomas Moore

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

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

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

“How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.” – Minnie Aumonier