Gertrude Jekyll Quotes

#1. My daily affairs are quite ordinary; but I'm in total harmony with them. I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict. Who cares about wealth and honor? Even the poorest thing shines. My miraculous power and spiritual activity: drawing water and carrying wood.

Layman Pang

#2. A garden is a grand teacher ... above all it teaches entire trust.

Gertrude Jekyll

#3. The possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention.

Gertrude Jekyll

#4. For the best building and planting ... the architect and gardener must have some knowledge of each other's business, and each must regard with feelings of kindly reverence the unknown domains of the other's higher knowledge.

Gertrude Jekyll

#5. In garden arrangement, as in all other kinds of decorative work, one has not only to acquire a knowledge of what to do, but also to gain some wisdom in perceiving what it is well to let alone.

Gertrude Jekyll

#6. More than half a century has passed, and yet each spring, when I wander into the primrose wood, I see the pale yellow blooms and smell their sweetest scent - for a moment I am seven years old again and wandering in that fragrant wood.

Gertrude Jekyll

#7. There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer.

Gertrude Jekyll

#8. A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.

Gertrude Jekyll

#9. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine.

Richard Dawkins

#10. The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies, but grows to the enduring happiness that the love of gardening gives.

Gertrude Jekyll

#11. There is a lovable quality about the actual tools. One feels so kindly to the thing that enables the hand to obey the brain. Moreover, one feels a good deal of respect for it; without it the brain and the hand would be helpless.

Gertrude Jekyll

#12. There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight.

Gertrude Jekyll

#13. To plant and maintain a flower border, with a good scheme for colour, is by no means the easy thing that is commonly supposed.

Gertrude Jekyll

#14. What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.

Gertrude Jekyll

#15. The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives.

Gertrude Jekyll

#16. I'd like to know that your love
Is love I can be sure of,
So tell me now and I won't ask again,
Will you still love me tomorrow?

Carole King

#17. Let me ask you a question. How long is too long to text someone back? My wife still thinks I died in 9/11.

Frankie Boyle

#18. It has taken me half a lifetime merely to find out what is best worth doing, and a good slice out of another half to puzzle out the ways of doing it.

Gertrude Jekyll

#19. It is the right of a democratically elected parliament to act in defence of our traditional liberties, and everything should be done to keep it that way.

Jeremy Corbyn

#20. It is no use asking me or anyone else how to dig ... Better to go and watch a man digging, and then take a spade and try to do it.

Gertrude Jekyll

#21. The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.

Gertrude Jekyll

#22. The Obama campaign was smarter, quicker on their feet than the Clinton camp.

Edward Klein

#23. I do not envy the owners of very large gardens. The garden should fit its owner or his or her tastes, just as one's clothes do; it should be neither too large nor too small, but just comfortable.

Gertrude Jekyll