Henry Mitchell Quotes About Gardens

• Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.

  Henry Mitchell

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.41, Indiana University Press

• Your garden will reveal yourself.

  Henry Mitchell

  Garden, Religion, Spirit

• Now the gardener is the one who has seen everything ruined so many times that (even as his pain increases with each loss) he comprehends - truly knows - that where there was a garden once, it can be again, or where there never was, there yet can be a garden.

  Henry Mitchell

  Death, Pain, Loss

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.3, Indiana University Press

• By the time one is eighty, it is said, there is no longer a tug of war in the garden with the May flowers hauling like mad against the claims of the other months. All is at last in balance and all is serene. The gardener is usually dead, of course.

  Henry Mitchell

  War, Flower, Garden

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.25, Indiana University Press

• Almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise.

  Henry Mitchell

  Confused, Garden, Religion

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.1, Indiana University Press

• There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late. Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he has too much stuff going on or not enough. For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart.

  Henry Mitchell

  Beautiful, Spring, Heart

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.17, Indiana University Press

• There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners. Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a 'natural way'. You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.

  Henry Mitchell

  Nature, Pride, Garden

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.3, Indiana University Press

• Nature does not hesitate to interfere with me. So I do not hesitate to tamper with it.

  Henry Mitchell

  Garden, Doe, Interfere

  Henry Mitchell (1999). “One Man's Garden”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Wherever humans garden magnificently, there are magnificent heartbreaks.

  Henry Mitchell

  Death, Garden, Dying

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.2, Indiana University Press

• Toads are conservative animals, I think, and not much given to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance, sat at toad.

  Henry Mitchell

  Animal, Garden, Thinking

• A garden is not a picture, but a language.

  Henry Mitchell

  Garden, Language

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.72, Indiana University Press

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin