• "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 in The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life
  • "It would never occur to most of us that 'plants' say anything at all, except in terms of what we read into them, or try to use them for. Yet in their responses to this wonderfully rhythmic and varying earth they are the most expressive of all forms of life."
    — John Hay in A Beginner's Faith in Things Unseen
  • "Gardens bring us into contact with the cycles and irrefutable laws of nature, teaching us indelible lessons about ourselves and about the messy, difficult, and beautiful processes of living."
    — Cait Johnson in Earth, Water, Fire, and Air
  • "A garden is so much like a church. So much care and feeding. Such competitiveness among the plants — some of them literally choke each other to death if you don't get out there and put a stop to it. The big gorgeous ones get lots of attention, but then one comes along that looks almost dead all season and suddenly, almost overnight, blooms splendidly forth. Never write anybody off completely. You just don't know."
    — Barbara Cawthorne Crafton in Let Us Bless the Lord, Year One
  • "When a garden is used as a place to pause for thought, that is when a Zen garden comes to life. When you contemplate a garden like this it will form as lasting impression on your heart."
    — Muso Soseki in The Temple in the House by Anthony Lawlor
  • "Japanese gardens ask that you go beyond the garden spiritually, that you look at the garden not merely as an object but also as a path into the realms of spirit."
    — Makoto Ooka in The Temple in the House by Anthony Lawlor
  • "The gardens of Islam also embody a religious ideal. The name 'Paradise' comes from 'pairdaeza,' Old Persian for a park or enclosure, and wherever Islam held sway can be found enclosed, paradisiacal gardens. These ideal oases of a dessert people have trees for shade, and water, revered as an elemental force, for music and entrancement, and its ability to open the mind to inspiration.
    — Jennifer Westwood in Sacred Journeys
  • "It is forbidden to live in a town that does not have a green garden."
    — Talmud, Yerushalmi, Kiddushin 4:12

More Quotes on Gardening