Monty Don Quotes

I think I just want to garden - or kill some plants, in my case.

This was the first day of our beginning to take up plants: we had much pleasure in collecting them for the natives offered their assistance and perfectly understood the method of taking them up and pruning them.

Finally, I get to have houseplants and they stay alive.

Gardening is easy. Stick it in the ground the right way up and most plants will grow perfectly well.

In a nursery, if you don't take care of those plants, your profits get lost real quickly. You have to weed. You have to water. You have to nurture. Also, you have to take care of your employees in such a way that they do the same.

We are told that the first part of the process is to select the very smallest seeds from the smallest plants, which is not at all unlikely, but I cannot speak to the fact from my own observation.

I also like to garden. I grow things, vegetables, flowers... I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids.

One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.

I always think of a show like a plant - a little pruning now and then keeps it healthy, but you shouldn't pull it out and chop the roots up.

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.

The average gardener probably knows little about what is going on in his or her garden.

I love tearing things out of the ground. I love digging and discarding. I love pruning. In fact, I love pruning so much that I once gave myself carpal-tunnel syndrome because I attacked a trumpet vine with so much dedication.

Because I am really interested in gardening, I do really interesting plants, not even always flowers. And because I have grown them, I really know them like friends. I paint everything from exotic orchids to rosehips growing wild in a hedge. They just have to speak to me.

I have trouble keeping plants alive. Even plastic ones.

I am a gardener, I have a big green thumb, and I can take care of these plants really easily because they are all fake.

I've just got a flat with a little balcony, so I did that fantastic thing of buying far too many plants and not really knowing what was going to stay alive and what wasn't.

You gotta water your plants. Nobody can water them for you.

What's not to aspire to about how to grow your own fruit and vegetables and plants, and then being creative?

We have a thousand hydrangea plants bordering the house, and they were all supposed to be pink, but a handful of them keep turning purple.

A plant I have grown for years without really taking much notice of is epimedium. You know how it is: someone gives you a plant, you stick it in the ground and somehow it never presses the trigger. There is no intimacy.

In any case, if I grow hybrid maize or hybrid pearl mallet or any hybrid, I have to sow fresh seed every year. I cannot keep the seed of the same plant. If I keep the seed of the same plant, yield will be much less and there will be a wide variation in the field, like maturity period, quality and so on.

Eggplants are finicky, complicated, and often misunderstood. If you know how to treat one well, then it shows that you have know-how and dedication.

I walk out to my backyard garden at certain times of the year, and I can't get 30 feet without stopping for 20 minutes because the goumis need trimming.

I'm good with furniture, very bad with plants.

During the season, you have to grow.