Gardening is not a rational act.

[T]here is no gardening without humility, an assiduous willingness to learn, and a cheerful readiness to admit that you were mistaken. Nature is continually sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.

Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade.

true plantsman knows, gardening is far from laissez-faire. In their book The Gardens of Democracy, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that moving from ‘machinebrain’ to ‘gardenbrain’ thinking calls for a simultaneous shift away from believing that things will self-regulate to realising that things need stewarding. ‘To be a gardener is not to let nature take its course; it is to tend,’ they write. ‘Gardeners don’t make plants grow but they do create conditions where plants can thrive and they do make judgments about what should and shouldn’t be in the garden.’46 That is why economic gardeners must throw themselves in, nurturing, selecting, repotting, grafting, pruning and weeding the plants as they grow and mature.

Another activity which is being encouraged is that of gardening. This is necessarily somewhat limited, but the opportunity for engaging in it has never been anywhere near exhausted. It makes its appeal alike to youth and age. It is extremely practical on the one hand, and lends itself to the artistic on the other.

I'm not really a career person; I'm a gardener, basically.

If you are not something of a philosopher,—and by philosophy I understand a serene temper, and the maintaining of an equable mind under the sharpest disappointments,—I do not advise you to cultivate, or at any rate to grow enamoured of, a garden.

Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

Environment can multiply (or divide) your effort.

Before you plant the garden, study the soil. After you plant the garden, tend the weeds.

First, selection. Think carefully about the right person to marry or business to pursue or city to live in.

Then, cultivation. Once you choose, care for it lovingly and nurture it into the best it can be.

Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn’t sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble.

The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies, but grows to the enduring happiness that the love of gardening gives.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.