Henry Van Dyke Quotes

Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That's the fun of them. You're always learning.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

Gardening is not my thing. You're digging in the dirt, and then a couple of months later, something happens.

During the season, you have to grow.

Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I am finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden, so there is a lot of work.

Literally, if someone says I am grounded, everyday I am at home, I actually have my hands in the ground and dirt under my fingernails. I don't have a staff to do it all for me. I still plant a seed and I'm amazed it grows.

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.

I'm pretty good at gardening. It consumes my time, and it feels like I'm doing something constructive.

My vegetable patch is my pride and joy.

You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can't just wait around, you have to water it and take care of it.

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

I'm not a gardener. I don't have the consistency for gardening, and I have barely enough for an orchard. I don't embarrass myself. You have to be there tending and weeding. With orchards, you can go through negligent periods and recover.

Gardening is seen as a pastime that is almost like belonging to the Church of England - a sign of maturity and wisdom and right thinking.

I'm a gardener, and I love to plant.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

I garden. It's very relaxing to me.

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

It's funny; as I get older I'm reverting to my roots - I want to plant stuff.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

I have a green thumb. I really like to get into the shrubs, the bushes, and really cultivate.

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

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