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Gardens Quotes

Browse 67 quotes about Gardens.

Gardens Quotes

“A gardener is like a prophet looking out on a barren land and saying, ‘I see corn on that hill, and beans beneath the grove, and lavender in the field, and over there some roses by the brick wall.’ Don’t you think that’s what a good friend should be like? A truly good friend is one who can look at our bare lives and see the fruit of what will one day come from deep inside us.”

LifeHopeFriendshipFantasyFriendsLivingSpidersGardensProphetsGardeners
Book:Of Secrets, Spiders & and the End of the World
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“waking up" in a dream, your mother's garden flourishes and she smiles and never knows the taste of rot in a dream, you take god off the shelf, shake the dirt from his shoulders he's smaller than he once was. you no longer tremble. in a dream, kindness dances off your tongue genuine, golden, graceful your silicone heart beating a song from your sister's piano you see the world through rosewater eyes in a dream, the greenest shoot sprouts from the ash how wonderful it is that some things still believe in resurrection that some things refuse to be destroyed.”

LoveLifeGodKindnessDreamsResurrectionSistersGardens
Author:E. P.
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“Gardens remind us to be patient and humble because that’s what they are. They have no delusions of grandeur or plotting schemes. They trust implicitly that they will be cared for as part of the cycle of nature. They give so much, yet they are unaware of their gift. They have no perception of themselves. They treat all of their inhabitants, of every type and form, as sacred and worthy. They surrender themselves to the moment with flawless confidence and, when it is called for, with the unmarred hope of renewal.”

LifeSoulSpiritualityNatureBalancePerceptionPlantsGardensLife CycleCycle Of Nature
Book:Together
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“They were in the middle of a garden with trees shaped as animals. There were gorillas and camels and lions. Rosie felt like she was in some strange storybook circus. Any minute the gorillas would start talking and the lions would charge towards her. "What are we doing here?" Rosie's eyes went wide. "Just follow me." Josh grinned. Rosie followed him through a maze of gardens, each more elaborate than the last. There was a Japanese garden bursting with pink and white blossoms. They passed a water garden with floating lilies, and a tropical garden with birds of paradise and purple irises. Finally they entered a small garden with low-lying plants. A butterfly rested on almost every leaf. Rosie had never seen so many butterflies. She stood still as a statue, afraid if she moved they'd fly away. "This is my favorite," Josh said as if he created the garden. "It's called the butterfly garden. All the flowers contain food attractive to butterflies. The butterflies lay their eggs and feast for days before they fly away." "They're like kaleidoscopes." Rosie peered at a butterfly with gold-and-turquoise wings.”

DatingFlowersButterfliesGardensTopiary Garden
Book:California Summer
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“Gardens are like relationships. If all is going well, they will constantly change and grow. If we are obsessive and controlling, we will lose the joy in it and miss out on all the unexpected and fantastic things that we neither planned nor even knew were possible. Care without compulsion is the key.”

LoveCareRelationshipsCompulsionGardensHealthy RelationshipsLove Of GardeningRelationships Of Love
Book:Geboor: Spiritual Fiction
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“A Garden Epitaph by Stewart Stafford From a verdant birth, Two roses entwined together, A union withered from the earth, Root quest in envenomed weather. Green fingers pruned with ill will, Each barb taken to wounded hearts, Cut natures freed of earthly swill, Two crimson blooms, beyond scars. Master gardener, just hear me, If you see devotion, leave it be, In silent witness, wonders see, Lest you hasten obsequies. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

GardenRoseGardeningGardenerLove PoemLove PoemsLove PoetryRosesGardensGardeners
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Sometimes we have to soak ourselves in the tears and fears of the past to water our future gardens. Wisdom grows not by sitting in peace and solitude in meditation, but by confronting the storms of the past, and studying what triggered them so that we can prevent them from happening again.”

WisdomTearsFutureSolitudeFearsSuzy KassemGardensConfronting FearsMeditatiion
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“When I was younger, my mom loved to garden. But the flowers would never grow. She kept planting seeds even thought nothing would grow. She just kept trying.' 'I don't understand.' 'Because you can't.' 'What does this have to do with anything?' I don't fiddle with my fingers and there's no apology on the tip of my tongue when I say, 'I am my mother's son.”

HopeGrowthDeterminationPerseveranceYaComing Of AgeYoung Adult FictionFlowersGardens
Book:Society's Foundlings
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“They spent the day with Lucia, who promised that the following day she would take them up to Scala, an even tinier, loftier town where her parents now lived. That evening, Mac took her to a restaurant called Il Flauto di Pan- Pan's Flute- perched at the Villa Cimbrone among the gardens and crumbling walls. It was probably the most beautiful restaurant she'd ever seen. The centuries-old villa was embellished with incredible gardens of fuchsia bougainvillea, lemon and cypress trees and flowering herbs that scented the air. Their veranda table had an impossibly gorgeous view of the sea.”

ItalyRestaurantGardensVillaIsabel And CormacZia Lucia
Book:The Beekeeper's Ball
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“Even today, with no spaces left on the shelves and walls, my octo-genarian mother builds stock off fanciful garden decor: a patch of copper whirligigs among the crepe myrtles, concrete tortoises creeping around the succulents, a ceramic Mediterranean pot that could house a small family.”

MothersDecorGardensTortoisesCalifornia Back Yard
Book:Making Peace With Paradise: an autobiography of a California girl
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“When she was a child, she'd often wondered about the old manor. Some said the place was haunted, but she thought it mysterious. Sometimes when she was a girl, she would wander through the wrought-iron gate along Ladenbrooke's stone wall. The fragrance from flowers on the other side captivated her along with the beauty of the gardens. The butterflies reminded her of the fairies she'd loved as a child and, when she was older, of the fairies dancing through the magical garden in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Shakespeare was born forty miles from here. In Stratford-upon-Avon. Perhaps the gardens in the Cotswolds inspired him as they once inspired her.”

ShakespeareButterfliesGardensManorA Midsummer Nights DreamHeather Toulson
Book:Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor
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“Far across the expanse of lawn, all Rose saw were trees, but there must've been more of the property beyond them. "Over there we've got the Apple Orchard, Berry Patch, Vegetable Garden, and Sunflower Grove." He then pointed in the opposite direction. "That way we've got the more French-style landscape, with the Reflecting Pool, the Moonlight Garden, Rose Garden, Stone Arbor, Fountain Field, and Lavender Garden. And way out there is Hemlock Pond, the Abundance Garden, the Meadow, and Statue Walk. So, yeah, getting lost is a possibility. But not the worst thing in the world in a place like this.”

RoomsGardensSegments
Book:Of Earthly Delights
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“His home was a part of him, an externalized expression of his will, for upon his inherited Dutch Manor house he had superimposed the Gothic magnificence which he desired. He had been attracted by the formulations of Andrew Downing, the young landscape architect who lived on the river at Newburgh and whose directions for building "romantic and picturesque villas" were changing the countryside; but it was not in Nicholas to accept another's ideas, and when five years ago he had remodeled the old Van Ryn homestead, he had used Downing simply as a guide. To the original ten rooms he had added twenty more, the gables and turrets, and the one high tower. The result, though reminiscent of a German Schloss on the Rhine, crossed with Tudor English and interwoven with pure fantasy, was nevertheless Hudson River American and not unsuited to its setting. The Dragonwyck gardens were as much as an expression of Nicholas' personality as was the mansion, for here, he had subdued Nature to a stylized ornateness. Between the untouched grove of hemlocks to the south and the slope of a rocky hill half a mile to the north he had created along the river an artificial and exotic beauty. To Miranda it was overpowering, and she felt dazed as they mounted marble steps from the landing. She was but vaguely conscious of the rose gardens and their pervasive scent, of small Greek temples set beneath weeping willows, of rock pavilions, violet-bordered fountains, and waterfalls.”

GothicGardensManor HouseArchitectural
Book:Dragonwyck
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“Nearly all human cultures plant gardens, and the garden itself has ancient religious connections. For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Christian European beliefs, and the pagan devotions to sacred groves of trees and sacred springs. My German translator gave me a fascinating book on the archaeology of Old Europe, and in it I discovered ancient artifacts that showed that the Old European cultures once revered snakes, just as we Pueblo Indian people still do. So I decided to take all these elements - orchids, gladiolus, ancient gardens, Victorian gardens, Native American gardens, Old European figures of Snake-bird Goddesses - and write a novel about two young sisters at the turn of the century.”

InspirationOrchidsGardensPre Christian EuropeAncient GardensGladiolusNative American SymbolismSnake Bird Goddess
Book:Gardens in the Dunes
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“At the lawn's edge, a grand set of graystone stairs led into Lady Ashbury’s rose garden. Pink blooms hugged the trellises, alive with the warm drone of diligent bees hovering about their yellow hearts. I passed beneath the arbor, unlatched the kissing gate and started down the Long Walk: a stretch of gray cobblestones set amongst a carpet of white alyssum. Halfway along, tall hornbeam hedges gave way to the miniature yew that bordered the Egeskov Garden. I blinked as a couple of topiaries came to life, then smiled at myself and the pair of indignant ducks that had wandered up from the lake and now stood regarding me with shiny black eyes. At the end of the Egeskov Garden was the second kissing gate, the forgotten sister (for there is always a forgotten sister), victim of the wiry jasmine tendrils. On the other side lay the Icarus fountain, and beyond, at the lake’s edge, the boathouse.”

FlowersNatures BeautyGardensPathwayKissing Gate
Book:The House at Riverton
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“A garden path,' write the landscape architects Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull, 'can become the thread of a plot, connecting moments and incidents into a narrative. The narrative structure might be a simple chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end. It might be embellished with diversions, digressions, and picaresque twists, be accompanied by parallel ways (subplots), or deceptively fork into blind alleys like the alternative scenerios explored in a detective novel.”

WalkingGardensLandscape ArchitecturePage 76
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“To the residents of this small southern town, the past is more than history, it is ancestry. It is a compilation of family stories, told and retold, from one generation to the next. It’s old brown photographs framed in silver on the piano. It’s grandmother’s dishes and the family home and ancient trees planted ages ago that still shade the porch and scrape the knees of children who climb them. It’s stables that have never been without horses and hay and Jack Russell Terriers. It’s gardens that have their roots in the 1800s and their fresh-cut blossoms on this evening’s dinner table. It’s an unbroken thread of memories and families and love. And the distinction between past and present often becomes blurred, the past sometimes superimposed over the present in a decidedly unique way.”

HistorySmall TownPast And PresentGardensSouthernersStablesFamily StoriesSouthern Town
Book:The Rhythm of Selby
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“The hill between the manor and forest displayed layers of Lady Croft's prized gardens. Paved pathways wove through a formal Italian garden, rose garden, water garden, lily pond, and a tulip garden built around Roman ruins. Maggie stood beside a statue of the goddess Hemera and a row of yew bushes that had been neatly pruned into a wall to form the perimeter of the Croft family maze. Walter sat nearby on a picnic blanket as she scanned the hillside above the maze to see if she could find Libby's copper-streaked hair among the immaculate gardens and all the people dressed in their finest for this entree into Ladenbrooke's gardens. The Croft family opened the front gate to the public once each summer. Hundreds of people from around the Cotswolds came to peruse Lady Croft's magnificent displays- the golden heather, purple dahlias, peach lilies floating on the pond.”

FlowersGardensManorLibby DoyleMaggie Doyle
Book:Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor
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“There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia. I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ... Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower... I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms. When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism. But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.”

SpiritualityZenMysticismSaintsGardensMenstruationPhotosynthesisApophaticKataphatic
Book:The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
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“The flat area immediately below was broken up into a formal pattern of beds containing oleander and more clipped clouds of box, a southern imitation of the grand parterres of aristocratic chateaux. A rose garden beyond was the first in a series of gardens created on descending levels, apparently linked by a magnificently overgrown wisteria. Dense lines of cypress hid any farther areas from view, including the memorial garden that was her special brief. As a whole, the garden was charming, luxuriant, but- from a professional point of view- dilapidated.”

FlowersGardensGarden DesignDilapidated
Book:The Sea Garden
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“... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.”

ApplesVegetablesFruitsGardensFruit TreesImported
Book:Miss Eliza's English Kitchen
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“She wandered around Sally's garden, sipping coffee, stopping to admire the grevillea and talk to the chickens. As the warmth of the sun unknotted the tension in her spine, Alice noticed a lush alley of potted tropical plants alongside the house: monstera, bird of paradise, agave, staghorns and ferns. Alice was filled with a sense of wonder; it was a garden within a garden, so meticulous and well-tended in contrast to the wild beauty surrounding it. The sumptuous blends of greens. The varying, glossy foliage.”

AustralianTherapeuticGardensPotted Plants
Book:The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
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“Mr. McCall cradled his four casaba melons in his hands. They were still attached to the vine. “I came out to water my casabas and I found this... this...” He was too upset to finish. He held the melons out to us. “Whoa!” I cried in amazement. No raccoon could have done this. No way. Someone had taken a black marker and drawn big, sloppy smiley faces on each melon!”

GardeningGardensR L StineRevenge Of The Lawn GnomesLawn Gnomes
Book:Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes
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“Madame Escoffier," he said. In his white apron, he was again the man she loved. The gentle man who only spoke in whispers. "I am sorry," she said. "I am not." He leaned over and kissed her. His lips tasted of tomatoes, sharp and floral. The moment, filled with the heat of a reckless summer, brought her back to the gardens they had grown together in Paris in a private courtyard behind Le Petit Moulin Rouge. Sweet Roma tomatoes, grassy licorice tarragon, thin purple eggplants and small crisp beans thrived in a series of old wine barrels that sat in the tiny square. There were also violets and roses that the 'confiseur' would make into jellies or sugar to grace the top of the 'petit-fours glacés,' which were baked every evening while the coal of the brick ovens cooled down for the night. "No one grows vegetables in the city of Paris," she said, laughing, when Escoffier first showed her his hidden garden, "except for Escoffier." He picked a ripe tomato, bit into it and then held it to her lips. "Pomme d'amour, perhaps this was fruit of Eden." The tomato was so ripe and lush, so filled with heat it brought tears to her eyes and he kissed her. "You are becoming very good at being a chef's wife." "I love you," she said and finally meant it. 'Pommes d'amour.' The kitchen was now overflowing with them.”

MemoriesGardensTomatoAuguste And Delphine
Book:White Truffles in Winter
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“When you do a poor job keeping track of where things are planted and what their maturity times are, it can lead to a bit of a nightmare as you plant things on top of each other, never quite sure what’s a weed and what’s intentionally there. When performed properly, it’s an amazing feeling to harvest something then immediately know there’s a plant that you’ve chosen waiting to fill that freshly opened soil.”

PlanningGardeningPlantsGardensHarvest TimeUrban GardeningUrban GardensGarden Planning
Book:A Pandemic Gardening Journal
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