Garden Quotes

 

Throughout the garden you will find slate plaques inscribed with wisdom words by writers, gardeners, philosophers, and poets. These I have had specially made. The sentiments reflect my own approach to life and to gardening.

Wisdom words to help the gardener with insights of reflection, humour, consolation, joy, inspiration, harmony and spirituality. Around the garden you will find over 30 plaques of welsh slate attached to various archways, garden buildings etc. Each one of these contains a quotation: words of garden wisdom, spirituality, reflection. As in life I find it is good when i the garden to be able to take stock of the situation around us, our place in the great scheme of things. This is another reason why I am particularly fond of 'Desiderata' by Max Ehrmann. I especially sought out these quotations and had them specially made.

Below then is a selection of quotations from my garden

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"By a garden is meant Mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight." (John Henry Cardinal Newman)

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Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. (Karel Capek) -

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He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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He who cultivates a garden, and brings to perfection flowers and fruits cultivates and advances at the same time his own nature.

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In the poor man's garden grow Far more than herbs and flowers - Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind, And Joy for weary hours. (Mary Howitt)

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"Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe." (Thomas Berry)

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"Gardens are not created or made, they unfold, to reveal the ground plot of the mind and heart of the gardener and the good earth." (Wendy Johnson)

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"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) --------------------------------------

Who loves a garden Finds within his soul Life's whole; He hears the anthem of the soil While ingrates toil; And sees beyond his little sphere The waving fronds of heaven, clear. (Louise Seymour Jones)

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A garden is the mirror of a mind. It is a place of life, a mystery of green moving to the pulse of the year, and pressing on and pausing the whole to its own inherent rhythms. (Henry Beston)

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To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour. (William Blake)

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And for our work— though showers And autumn frosts destroy— Our greatest pay is not measured In fruit and flower we've treasured, But in the golden hours That brought us health and joy! (Frederick Frye Rockwell)

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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.

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

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No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture conmparable to that of the garden (Thomas Jefferson)

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Gardening is medicine that does not need a prescription ... And with no limit on dosage.

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The garden reconciles human art and wild nature, hard work and deep pleasure, spiritual practice and the material world. It is a magical place because it is not divided. (Thomas Moore)

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I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself And I find sufficient purpose for my day. (Robert Brault,)

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"Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden, And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words and kind deeds." (Longfellow)

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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)

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The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies, but always grows and grows to an enduring and ever-increasing source of happiness. (Gertrude Jekyll)

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I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day. (F. Frankfort Moore)

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I should like to enflame the whole world with my taste for gardening. There is no virtue that I would not attribute to the man who lives to project and execute gardens. (Prince De Ligne)

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A garden should be in a constant state of fluid change, expansion, experiment, adventure; above all it should be an inquisitive, loving, but self-critical journey on the part of its owner. (H. E. Bates)

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Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity. (John Evelyn, 1666)

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A garden really lives only insofar as it is an expression of faith, the embodiment of a hope and a song of praise. (Russell Page)

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Gardens are not created or made, they unfold, spiralling open like the silk petals of an evening primrose flower to reveal the ground plot of the mind and heart of the gardener and the good earth. (Wendy Johnson)

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In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there. To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe. I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels. (Dodinsky)

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In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. (Abram L. Urban)

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With rake and seeds and sower, And hoe and line and reel, When the meadows shrill with "peeping" And the old world wakes from sleeping, Who wouldn't be a grower That has any heart to feel? (Frederick Frye Rockwell)

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I have found, through years of practice, that people garden in order to make something grow; to interact with nature; to share, to find sanctuary, to heal, to honour the earth, to leave a mark. Through gardening, we feel whole as we make our personal work of art upon our land. (Julie Moir Messervy)

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To create a garden is to search for a better world. In our effort to improve on nature, we are guided by a vision of paradise. Whether the result is a horticultural masterpiece or only a modest vegetable patch, it is based on the expectation of a glorious future. This hope for the future is at the heart of all gardening. (Marina Schinz)

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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)

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The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before. (Vita Sackville-West)

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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)

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The first purpose of a garden is to be a place of quiet beauty such as will give delight to the eye and repose and refreshment to the mind. (Gertrude Jekyll)

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Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer. (Patricia R. Barrett)

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