As the famous Roman statesman Cicero once said, ‘if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.’ Here are a selection of garden quotes to fill you with inspiration for the great outdoors.
Need a boost to get out in the garden, come rain or shine? Here, a selection of famous names share their wisdom when it comes to gardening. From authors to painters, these quotes remind us how creative, meditative and restorative gardening can be.
For more on art and gardens, why not check out our piece focusing on artistic representations of gardens through the ages. And here is a chance to tour some of the world’s best gardens from your sofa.
The best quote about gardens to inspire you
I am not a greedy person except about flowers and plants, and then I become fanatically greedy.
May Sarton (1912-1996)
A garden is never so good as it will be next year
Thomas Cooper (Horticulture Magazine January 1993)
‘A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in – what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.’
from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Gardening has this embracing quality in that it colours the way you look at the world.
from Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively (1933-)
If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.
from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924)
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
I have seen women looking at jewellery ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January.
from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (1955-)
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106BC-43BC)
He plants trees to benefit another generation.
Caecilius Statius (220BC-167BC)
A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule
Michael Pollan (Second Nature 1991)
There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon.
Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
Weeding is a delightful occupation, especially after summer rain, when the roots come up clear and clean. One gets to know how many and various are the ways of weeds – as many almost as the moods of human creatures
Gertrude Jekyll (Wood and Garden 1899)
One thing that unites all gardeners as they contemplate the compost heap is a belief in reincarnation, at least for plants.
Geoffrey Charlesworth (The Opinionated Gadener 1988)
What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.
Charles Dudley Warner (My Summer in a Garden 1871)
Who has learned to garden who did not at the same time learn to be patient?
HLV Fletcher (Purest pleasure 1949)
Correct handling of flowers refines the personality
Gustie L Herrigel (Zen in the art of Flower Arrangement 1958)
There is no doubt whatsoever that I will be outlived by my garlic, and that long after my own genes have been diluted beyond recognition, my bindweed’s genes will be the same genes I left behind in my first, failed garden.
Sara Stein (My Weeds 1988)
No two gardens are the same. No two days are the same in one garden.
Hugh Johnson (1939 – )