After a dormant winter, there’s something magical about watching the world outside our window come to life again. New green leaves appear on towering trees and humble shrubs; flower bulbs push through the sun-warmed soil; tufts of grass and clover tumble across yards, dotted with dandelions. It’s a time of year when everything seems renewed and refreshed, ready to dazzle us with color and beauty around every bend.
Nothing beats digging your hands into freshly turned soil in anticipation of the abundance to come, feeling attuned to the resilience of nature. But you don’t have to be a gardener to appreciate the beauty of the natural world or to marvel at the way a seed bursts forth with tender shoots and determined roots. Growth comes in many shapes and forms, and gardening — whether across an acre in the countryside or in a terra-cotta pot on a city balcony — offers inspiration and encouragement. After all, nurturing a plant is not so different from nurturing ourselves: We all need water, sunshine, and plenty of TLC to grow. With that in mind, let these quotes about gardening inspire you to enjoy all the growth in your own life.
I’m an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art.Ron Finley, fashion designer and urban gardener
I think I may be a better person for having given serious time and thought and effort to gardening.Martha Stewart
There are few satisfactions greater than the planting of trees.Thornton Wilder, writer
The garden suggests there might a place where we can meet nature halfway.Michael Pollan
Gardening is the greatest tonic and therapy a human being can have. Even if you have only a tiny piece of earth, you can create something beautiful, which we all have a great need for.Audrey Hepburn
Just for today, till your mental soil with determination. Fertilize your emotional soil with positive words. Plant the seed of your heart’s desire with your disciplined efforts.Iyanla Vanzant, inspirational speaker
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? / Because the lovely little flower is free / Down to its root, and, in that freedom, boldWilliam Wordsworth, poet
A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.Gertrude Jekyll, writer and horticulturist
Gardening is all about optimism. I put a seed in the ground. I consistently tend it, confident I will see the results, in time, of all the nurture I have provided.Mary Anne Radmacher, writer
Living things tend to change unrecognizably as they grow. Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? Flora or fauna, we are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors.Diane Ackerman, poet and naturalist
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.Margaret Atwood, writer
In planting the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.Henry David Thoreau
The secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.Mary Collier, writer
Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout.Morihei Ueshiba, martial artist
Gardening is full of mistakes, almost all of them pleasant and some of them actually instructive, and it all turns out right at the last.Henry Mitchell, garden writer
The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.May Sarton, writer
Mary, Mary, quite contrary / How does your garden grow?With silver bells and cockleshells / And pretty maids all in a row.Mother Goose nursery rhyme
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.Robert Henri, artist
Planting trees is a gesture into the future, it is a hand held out to other generations.Mirabel Osler, writer and garden designer
The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under and meditate…Jack Kerouac
Photo credit: MarkSwallow/ iStock
