Kay, LOL. I can't tell you how many times that thought has occurred to me!

What fun! I just happened upon this site and now have to go back and browse all the mentioned links!

I found this verse carved onto a stone plaque, hung in a garden at Kiftsgate Court in England:

Hours fly
Flowers die
New days
New ways
Love stays

"I garden - therefore I grow." Marilyn Lake

"Old gardeners never die.....they just run out of thyme"

It is nice and cool this evening in North Florida. Go figure. It's a nice surprise and we are trying to savor each day, for soon it will hot and humid here as well. Anyway ... one of my favorite garden quotes is, "The garden is my salvation, I shall not leave a weed." (For weed you might also substitute: slug, aphid, mosquito, gnat, Japanese beetle, etc.)

Love these! A friend sent me this poem and it has become on of my fav's.

Whoever Makes A Garden

Whoever makes a garden
Has never worked alone;
the rain has always found it,
The sun has always known;
The wind has blown across it
And helped to scatter seeds;
Whoever makes a garden
Has all the help he needs.

Whoever makes a garden
Should surely not complain,
With someone like the sunshine
And someone like the rain
And someone like the breezes
To aid him in his toil
And someone like the Father
Who gave the garden soil.

Whoever makes a garden
Has, oh, so many friends;
The glory of the morning
The dew when daylight ends.
For rain and wind and sunshine
And dew and fertile sod;
And he who makes a garden
Works hand and hand with God.

Author unknown

For all his sophistication, man owes his very existence to four inches of top soil and the fact that it rains.

I was searching and searching everywhere for a quote to include on my Calligraphy Group's calendar for next year which has a Floral theme and vaguely remembered the poem which ended with "One is nearer to God in a garden etc. etc." and finally found it easily at your site. I only wish I had found you earlier. Thankyou. I'm sure I will visit again!

"Time spent in the garden is never wasted." (source unknown) is one I console myself with when I've spent all day gardening, and accomplished a fraction of the goals I set out with (although I make up new ones as I go along)!

Another one I've remembered for over 20 years is "Find out what you can grow well, and grow lots of it." (Lord Abercrombie, via Making Things Grow by Thalassa Cruso)

Your mind is a Garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the Harvest can be either Flowers or Weeds.

We all take special care with our gardens and favorite plants. This quote reminds me to keep my thoughts pure and to treat people with at least as much kindness and care as I do my plants. I want the harvest of my garden and my mind to be flowers, not weeds.

Jane

loved reading all

I also loved reading all these quotes - i am from Aus and it was interesting to read things that we have here as well - we can buy lots of garden plaques from nurseries and markets and i have a lovely one with fairies on it. Beautiful quotes - thank you

OK, I have read them all. Last May my little community had a small garden tour and my little 3 year garden was on the tour. I painted a canvas black to look like a blackboard and painted with white to look like chalk

"Come into my garden, my flowers want to see you"

I used a stencil to paint flowers along the side, put it in an ornate gold frame and placed on an easel at the garden entrance. I had seen this on a garden stone and it appealed to me.

No one is a geek in their own yard.

From an old issue of Oganic Gardening. Can't leave the yard and garden wearing my special gardening outfits. But I clean up pretty good! Piegirl

"The time to hear bird music is between four and six in the morning. Seven is not too late, but by eight the fine rapture is over,due, I suspect, to the contentment of the inner man that comes with breakfast; a poet should always be hungry or have a lost love." (DC Peattie)

"The grass divides as with a comb,
a spotted shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your feet,
and opens farther on." (Emily Dickinson)

"Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees."
(Karle Wilson Baker)

"When we tug at a single thing in nature we find it attached to the rest of the world" (John Muir)

"This is the way life works on earth. Every living thing is a spark of sunlight energy, a crystal bead in the net of life"
(Steve Van Matre)

These are just a few from the BEST mail-order catalog, Forest Farm. I've spent hours reading about all the plants from around the world. I feel it would be more than one life time to know them all.

My favorites :

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Albert Einstein

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has Genius, Power and Magic in it. Goethe

Here's a nice assortment.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.gardendigest.com/spirit.htm

When the world wearies and ceases to satisfy...
There is always the garden.

"Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers."

-Veronica A. Shoffstall

What great quotes. I gave my mom a stone for her garden that had engraved on it:
Weed it and reap.

I just love this poem...

A Garden Just For You

For the garden of your daily living plant
three rows of peas:
1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of soul

Plant four rows of squash:
1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness

Plant four rows of lettuce:
1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another

No garden is without turnips:
1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnip for service
3. Turnip to help one another

To conclude our garden we must have thyme:
1. Thyme for each other
2. Thyme for family
3. Thyme for friends

Water freely with patience and cultivate
with love. There is much fruit in your
garden because your reap what you sow.

An hour in the garden puts lifes problems into prospective.

this is my all time favorite,
Life begins in the Garden.

very simple & true

Four garden-related quotes:
=========================
1. A garden is a reflection of one's soul.
2. The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for Him there. - George Bernard Shaw
3. He who throws dirt, loses ground.
4. Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow. - The Secret Garden

A Poem:
=======
There is peace with a garden, a peace so deep and calm.
That when the heart is troubled, ItÂs like a soothing balm.
ThereÂs life within a garden, A life that still goes on.
Filling the empty places, when older plants have gone.
ThereÂs glory in the garden, at every time of year,
Spring, summer, autumn, winter, it fills the heart with cheer.
So everyone tend your garden, its beauty to increase.
For in it you will find solace, and in it you will find peace.

" A house without a tree...aint fit fer a dawg" My brother thought this one up years ago as a comedy ad for his new landscape biz. LOL!!

~ Earth laughs in flowers ~

by Emerson

my favourite!

Ancient Cajun saying... "chickens in de yahd mean no roaches in de house"

I saw this on a billboard...

"Life is a garden...DIG IT!"

My favorite quote is from Henry Mitchell. In one of his gardening columns reprinted in The Essential Earthman, Mitchell wrote of summer storms and their effect on gardens:

There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners. Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a "natural way." You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filed laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.

Great Gardners are like Great Cooks - if it is a failure, throw it to the dogs before anyone knows about it.

A finished garden is a dead gardner.

Everyone should spend a lot more kneel time - the more time you spend on your knees doing anything, the better person you are. It keeps you humble.

perfect for a dreary sunday morning to lighten ones soul. thanks to all - now to check out those links. : >>

I believe life is lived one day at a time, so this quote is a reminder and helps me enjoy my garden more.

Smiles,

Lyn

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of
enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie

* Posted by Mar (ebraith@axion.net) on
Fri, Aug 7, 98 at 1:39

******The new Getty Museum in Los Angeles has a garden too new to really appreciate but the structures and layout are beautiful. On a stone tablet there is a quote from Irwin that includes the phrase..."ever changing...never twice the same. Does anyone out there know the rest?******

I just found this thread tonight, and am planning on reading it at a leisurely pace tomorrow. In the meantime, I googled this phrase and here's what I came up with:

Robert Irwin began planning the Central Garden in 1992, as a key part of the Getty Center project. Since the Center opened in 1997, the Central Garden has evolved as its plants have grown and been trimmed. New plants are constantly being added to the palette. Irwin's statement, "Always changing, never twice the same," is carved into the plaza floor, reminding visitors of the ever-changing nature of this living work of art.

I can't believe no one mentioned these from the Bible:

"I am the vine, you are the branches"- Jesus

and
"I am the vine... My Father is the Gardener" John 15:1 - Jesus

and this simple one:

"Grow, Da** It!"

:) Karen

What a wonderful thread! How could selected ones be bound up as a gift for a friend who is getting a new home, and garden!?

Here's one for November, a poem,

November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.
- Clyde Watson

Here's a haiku for November:

Afternoon raking

Orange, red, yellow and dead

Each leaf a story

THis is one of my favorites.

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O'keefe

My favorite is from Wordsworth-
"Nature never did betray the heart that loved her".

For Mar (re: the John Irwin quote from the Getty garden)-
"Ever present, never twice the same, ever changing, never less than whole."

Don't wear perfume in the garden - unless you want to be pollinated by bees. ~Anne Raver

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~Author Unknown

Theres another quote I love, but I cant think of the words right now...

At a garden day class this past weekend, a gentleman shared with us...

"No man shall sow more than his wife can hoe."

I'd rather be a forest than a street.
Simon & Garfunkel

And the Lord God planted a garden in the east in Eden and there He placed the man whom He had made.
Genesis 2:8

"I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with Nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error." ~Sara Stein

Loam wasn't built in day!

I make poetry garden stones, here are two of my latest.
For my neighbor that has lovely tulips, I gave her these stones:
DREAMING OF YOUR 2 LIPS
And
For my neighbor that has morning glories every year,
WELL GOOD MORNING GLORY

Thank you for the quote from Georgia O'Keeffe, one of my heroes.

One of my all time favorites is from another of my heroes, Eleanor Roosevelt said,
"I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall."

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow"

You are what you eat.

Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts.

"Show me your garden and I'll tell you what you are" Alfred Austin

"you can bury a lot of troubles, digging in the dirt"