These short garden quotes, jokes, and puns are funny or light-hearted while others are more sentimental, expressing the heart of gardening. Have a look and find some new favorites.
If want a quote to hang in your garden, also see these 60 Garden Sign Ideas—Funny, Sweet, & Practical.
Garden Quotes: Funny & Meaningful
Garden and nature-inspired quotes have been shared for centuries. Some capture the funny side of life while others touch on the more sentimental we can all relate to.
If you are looking for humor, I started with funny or lighthearted sayings—some of them are quite cheeky—along with some garden riddles and puns.
You’ll also find a selection of more introspective quotes from various writers, gardeners, and poets.
Contents
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Funny or Lighthearted
“Gardening is cheaper than therapy. Until your spouse adds up the receipts.”
~Empress of Dirt
“Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.”
~Jean Jacques Rousseau
“All gardeners know better than other gardeners.”
~Chinese Proverb
“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.”
~Doug Larson
“You know you’re a gardener when you’re happy to devote three months of your life growing tomatoes to save $1.27.”
~Unknown
“I am a gardener. What’s your superpower?”
~Empress of Dirt
“Gardening requires lots of water—most of it in the form of perspiration.”
~Lou Erickson
“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
~Unknown
“Money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy plants, and that’s the same thing.”
~Unknown
“I’ve always was afraid of gardening. But then I decided to grow a pear.”
~Unknown
“Plant carrots in January and you’ll never have to eat carrots.”
~Unknown
“Housework is for people who don’t know how to garden.”
~Unknown
“The philosopher who said that work well done never needs doing over never weeded a garden.”
~Ray Everson
“When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.”
~Unknown
“When the going gets tough, the tough get growing.”
~Empress of Dirt
Garden Jokes & Puns
What’s a gardener’s favorite Beatles song?
Lettuce bee.
Why did the trees need to take a nap?
For rest.
Does anyone know a good place where I can buy a fern?
Asking for a frond.
With fronds like these, who needs anemones?
What do you get when you cross a four-leaf clover with poison ivy?
A rash of good luck.
What’s small, red, and whispers?
A hoarse radish.
What do you call a bee that is hard to understand?
A mumble bee.
What do you call a French baker’s favorite flower?
Croissanthemum.
I wasn’t all that interested in gardening, but I planted a few seeds, and it grew on me.
I used to make lots of money clearing leaves from gardens.
I was raking it in.
Why should you avoid arguing with a cactus?
Too many great points.
How do trees use Facebook?
They log in.
What do you call a plain potato that talks a lot?
A common-tator.
What’s the most popular dating app for trees?
Timber.
Someone added soil to my allotment.
The plot thickens….
Garden Life Lessons
“You can bury any number of headaches in the garden.”
~Charles Barnard (1889)
“Without flowers, there would be no us.”
“Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.”
~Unknown
“I like gardening. It’s a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.” ~Alice Sebold | Get free printable here
“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.” ~Rudyard Kipling
“When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.” ~Minnie Aumonier
“Do not spread the compost on the weeds.”
~William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves.”
~Ken Druse
“Nature does not hurry yet everything is accomplished.”
~Unknown
“I do some of my best thinking while pulling weeds.”
~Martha Smith
“If you’ve never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden.”
~Robert Brault
“In nature, nothing exists alone.”
~Rachel Carson
“The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.”
~Monty Don
“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect.”
~Alice Walker
“A garden is a silent, loyal friend and a great listener.”
~Empress of Dirt
“Despite the gardener’s best intentions, Nature will improvise.”
~Michael Garofalo
“There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.”
~Alfred Austin
“It’s amazing how many worries are lost while gardening.”
~Empress of Dirt
“Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint and the soil and sky as canvas.”
~Elizabeth Murray
“If you don’t have failure, you don’t why things are succeeding.”
~Monty Don
“A person of words and not deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”
~Unknown
“Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.”
~Henry David Thoreau
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
~Aristotle
“I like gardening—it’s a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.”
~Alice Sebold
“Gardening situates you in a different kind of time, the antithesis of the agitating present of social media. Time becomes circular, not chronological; minutes stretch into hours; some actions don’t bear fruit for decades. The gardener is not immune to attrition and loss, but is daily confronted by the ongoing good news of fecundity. A peony returns, alien pink shoots thrusting from bare soil. The fennel self-seeds; there is an abundance of cosmos out of nowhere….
Is art resistance? Can you plant a garden to stop a war? It depends how you think about time. It depends what you think a seed does, if it’s tossed into fertile soil. But it seems to me that whatever else you do, it’s worth tending to paradise, however you define it and wherever it arises.”
~Olivia Lang
My garden has been my pleasure, and a daily recreation since the spring opened for planting… Every plant one tends he falls in love with, and gets the glad response for all his attentions and pains. Books, persons even, are for the time set aside — studies and the pen. — Only persons of perennial genius attract or recreate as the plants, and of books we may say the same, as of the magic of solitude.
~Bronson Alcott
More Quotes
- Garden Wisdom With Monty Don
- Charles Barnard: Victorian Era Urban Gardener
- Alice Sebold: Free Printable Quote
- Van Gogh Nature Quote
- The Only Summer Garden Checklist You’ll Ever Need (Quote)
- I am a gardener. What’s your superpower? (Quote)
~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛
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Shawn says
I really enjoy the garden quotes. Thanks!
Sharon Croucher says
laughed out loud at the quotes and jokes!
just want you to know how much I enjoy your newsletter and have done several of the projects. I recently found a use for my husband cigar boxes when I saw the luggage idea you ran. Little mini version of yours called,Cigardens.
Thanks for sharing!
Melissa J. Will says
Thank you, Sharon. Cigardens — I love it! Glad you found some laughs here too!
Doris says
I love your site and gardening. Even at 90 years old, slower but joy of gardening is still there.Quiet and prayer and thought all grow with the plants. January and /February are enjoyable as planning months. A good way to spend those cold months. Thank you for your work on this site.
Melissa J. Will says
What a lovely message. Thank you so much, Doris. I too enjoy those quieter months—in fact, I think they are my favorite. Best wishes, Melissa
Claire Daniel says
I look forward to every hint that you provide. Thank you so much. I need them!
Thresa says
indeed healthy advice
Pegs says
I really enjoy to read all your gardening articles, they’re so inspiring. Despite living in a sub-tropical climate here in the South East of Australia (where the seasons of the year are quite different from your there in Canada) I can still find many useful gardening tips and tricks to apply in my little garden.
Thank you so much Melissa!…and warm greetings from Australia 😊
Melissa J. Will says
Thank you, Pegs! Your kind words are much appreciated. I am a big fan of Gardening Australia. I particularly enjoy the Garden Path segments. I’m always learning new things. Cheers,
Sharon Rhine says
Absolutely LOVED your very real descriptions of how you bravely became a runner! I can truly relate to your agony, at the beginning, and the day of ecstasy when you discovered the feeling of a “runners high”. I started running at age 43, and it was a similar struggle. But as my strength grew, and the pounds were left on the roads I ran on, it became my favorite time of the day. I’m 73 now, and walk more than run, but it’s remained “my time” during busy days. Time to enjoy the trees, birds, sky, and everything that Mother Nature has to offer. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with your readers!! I love all your gardening articles.
Melissa J. Will says
Thank you, Sharon. I’m mostly a walker now too. It’s “my time” too. Very enjoyable.
Eileen says
Loved this last post of garden quotes and puns.
Janet Larson says
Love YOUR quotes!!!!!