10 Favorite Gardening Quotes

1.) “There really are only two rules to composting: 1.) You pile it up, and 2.) You let it rot.” (Felder Rushing, garden writer and retired Mississippi Extension agent)

Tony Avent

2.) “The only thing that two gardeners ever agree on is what the third gardener does wrong.” (Tony Avent, garden writer and owner of Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina)

3.) “Gazebos aren’t for gardeners. They’re for other people, because do gardeners ever really sit?” (Also by Tony Avent)

4.) “Shade gardening is like Oreo cookies. Having too much can give you a stomach ache, but having none is cruel and unusual punishment.” (Allan Armitage, author and Georgia horticulture professor)

5.) “Your garden should reflect your lifestyle, not that of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.” (author Tom Christopher in “The 20-Minute Gardener”)

6.) “As long as you use something spiky, something roundy and something frilly, people will think you know what you’re doing.” (Felder Rushing on garden design)

7.) “Most problems we confront are from things the builders and developers did to our ground.” (Dr. Richard Lighty, retired director of the Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware)

8.) “The success of my garden is built on the compost of my failures.” (Jimmy Turner, director of gardens at Dallas Arboretum and fellow Penn State grad)

9.) “The thing about a mixed border is that it’s not something that you plant in a day. You plan, adjust, look, then replant, then look again, then replant again. You move plants until they break your back – then you cut them down.” (Richard Hartlage, garden designer and admitted “plant junkie”)

10.) “It’s OK to move plants. That’s why God invented shovels.” (Tony Avent)