"nothing succeeds like wretched excess" - Queen Victoria.

Not really a gardening quote, but it certainly applies to the smilax vines that pop up everywhere in the summer around here.

"Come into my garden, I'd like my plants to meet you."

token, your quote also applies to my gardens since I have been wintersowing.

Posted by token28001: "nothing succeeds like wretched excess" - Queen Victoria.
Especially when ordering new varieties of seeds! Winter sowing has taught me that no mattter how many varieties you have, you still need more.

"All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar."
~Helen Hayes

Posted by dirtbert:
"Come into my garden, I'd like my plants to meet you."

"Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are."
~Alfred Austin

"Do what you have to do
so you can do what you
want to do"
This is what i tell my grandchildren.
Not really a garden quote,but one i need to remember,when i need to clean house,and i want to be outside.
cAROL

"And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"

- Joni Mitchell/"Woodstock"

Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof.
~Julie Moir Messervy

"Giuseppe, here's spoon. Go play in the dirt."

--My Italian Grandmother

I have a neat sign in my front garden that says "Old gardeners never die, they just spade away."
I like it and it gets a few chuckles.
gg

This is one of my favorites:

"The kiss of the sun for pardon,
the song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer
God's heart in a garden,
than anywhere else on earth."

But I also like the quote attributed to Dorothy Parker when she was challenged to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence.

And someday I am going to get a custom-printed sign or doormat that says "Welcome to Shankgrala" (because our last name is Shank).

Lois in PA

You can take a horticulture...but you can't make her think?

OMG!!! Token, that is the best! hahahahaha. Made my day.

Yep, that's the one!

That's the one I was thinking of, Token!
actually my fav is "Grow where you are planted"
Don't know were it's from but it always seems to apply!lol!
-B

Bloom, bloom, bloom where you're planted.
You will find your way.
Bloom, bloom, bloom where you're planted.
You will have your day.

Look at the flowers, look at them growing,
They never worry, they never work.
Look at the way our Father clothes them,
Each with beauty all its own.
Each with beauty all its own.

Some plant the seeds that others will water,
But in all things, God gives the growth.
Come let Him garden the flowers within you,
Come and discover some you've never known.
Come and discover some you've never known.

Look at the love that lies deep within you,
Let yourself be! Let yourself be!
Look at the gifts you have been given.
Let them go free! Let them go free!
Let them go free! Let them go free!

Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed.
~Lewis Gannit

I garden for my children.
I garden because of my children.
I garden in spite of my children.

Seedmama

What a great thread. Love the wretched excess!

Some of my standby favorites:
"We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children." (Native American proverb, I think)

"If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
and from thy slender store
Two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy Hyacinths to feed thy Soul." (Saadi)

"In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love" (Baha'u'llah)

"Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade."
(Rudyard Kipling)

Introductory lede from an article on toxicity in horticulture:

Quote:(You may commence panicking now, if so inclined, though statistically, driving to the grocery store is more dangerous. So panic in moderation, if you can.)

You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt. ~Author Unknown

I think this could apply to the garden.

" To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven."

Don't remember from whom, it's on a plaque in my garden though.
Pattie

The flower offered of itself
And eloquently spoke
Of Gods
In languages of rainbows
Perfumes
And secret silence...
~Phillip Pulfrey

" To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven."
Ecclesiastes III (King James Version): 3:1

Thanks mnwsgal, I thought it was biblical but, not sure from where.
Pattie

There is one by Hellen Keller "Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It's what sunflowers do."
Another fav is attributed to Einstein "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
-B

Bloom where your planted

Free Weeds, you pick! ")

Bless these Blooms

Friends & Butterflys gather here

Take time to smell the Flowers

Caution : Bee & Butterfly Crossing

Genesis 2:15: Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

"If you're not living in Eden, it's because you didn't tend the garden."
My son during a conversation on our way to school.

Wow Nancy- it's no just grow but BLOOM!?! I've always used this one when I'm in a place I don't like(ie. job, present location) Not just maintain but flourish...hmmm
-B

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

(William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream)

I think the best one I ever heard came from my neighbor's son a few years ago.

He had just turned 4 and wanted to help me plant my WS seedlings. I showed him how he could help and he just loved carrying the containers to the lawn cart, taking them out of the lawn cart and digging in the dirt with me.

Later in the day I sat on the ground with him and was lamenting about how many containers where still left and said, "what are we going to do? We're running out of room to plant all the seedlings."

This poor little 4 year old just looked at me with that 4 year old puzzled look that says "what are you talking about?".
He got up and ran all around the front yard, stopped in lots of places looking at the ground, the dirt, the lawn. Then he bent down with a little trowel and dug up a bit of dirt and ran back to me, showed me the dirt and said.

"dirt, dirt everywhere, dig a hole and plunk it in". then he grabbed a container and ran back to the whole he dug, took out the seedling and "plunked it in the hole, pushed the dirt around it and said.
"plenty of room, dirt, dirt, everywhere, dig a hole and plunk it in."

That was the last time I worried about where to put the seedlings. We stuffed them in the beds I already had, and spent the rest of the summer and fall digging new beds where there was "dirt."

So the favorite garden quote is from a 4 year old.

"PLENTY OF ROOM.'DIRT, DIRT, EVERYWHERE, DIG A HOLE AND PLUNK IT IN."

Fran

Fran, I love it!

ANother one of my favorites I quote in the greenhouse a lot is:

"Grow, damn it!"

If friends were flowers, I'd pick you.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try some time, you might find, you get what you need.

Mick Jagger.

Old gardeners never die, they just go to pot. (or jugs)

Posted by retiredprof 7
"Giuseppe, here's spoon. Go play in the dirt."
--My Italian Grandmother

Such a wise Nonna! Good advice, since my son stole all my gardening tools and lost them in the sandbox!! Now I'm off to re-purpose a spoon, and play in the dirt!

"Dirt, dirt everywhere... dig a hole and plunk it in!"

love it!

"Nonsense is quick-paced, whereas true knowledge stays at home Cinderella-like and no good fairy comes to the rescue."

"Who plants a seed beneath the sod, and waits to see, believes in God" -- Author unknown

"There's your plan and there's God's plan...your plan doesn't matter." -- David Geffen, successful music producer.

"I think that in everything we do, in every style of life, there is art to be found. Not just in the studios of talented artists, but in the gardens, homes, relationships,
spirits, voices, and fashions of people you see everyday."
~Amy Butler

"A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place, but intends to stay."
- Sara Stein

"and the little girl said, but which is a weed and which is not? and the man answered with, If it pulls out easy, stick it back in the ground. If it's hard to pull out, keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling, And the little girl said, OK I get it, don't pull anything, then I won't pull the wrong thing. Or I can just walk away and wait till the flowers and then I will know what to keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling."

My grandpa to me when I was a little girl

Fran

"Seeds are given by God to eventually bless us with joy. You were once as a seed and now you are someone's joy!"

This is one of my first memories with my Mom out among her flowers, while holding a dewy rose under my nose to smell and hugging me close, she told me this.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow