Wendell Berry Quotes About Gardens

Quotes about: Gardens

• The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Responsibility, Garden

  Wendell Berry (1978). “The unsettling of America: culture & agriculture”, Random House (NY)

• Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.

  Wendell Berry

  Independent, Garden, Thinking

• To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Garden, Earth Day

• One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Garden, Race

• Our Children no longer learn how to read the great book of Nature from their own direct experience, or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water come from or where it goes. We no longer coordinate our human celebration with the great liturgy of the heavens.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Children, Book

• We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

  Wendell Berry

  Time, Learning, Garden

• A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us.

  Wendell Berry

  Home, Garden, Practice

  Wendell Berry (2017). “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”, p.61, Penguin UK

• The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.

  Wendell Berry

  Journey, Garden, Land

  "The Unsettling of America". Book by Wendell Berry, 1977.

• The country where he lives is haunted by the ghost of an old forest. In the cleared fields where he gardens and pastures his horses it stood once, and will return. There will be a resurrection of the wild. Already it stands in wait at the pasture fences.

  Wendell Berry

  Country, Horse, Past

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.93, Counterpoint Press

• If you grow a garden you are going to shed some sweat, and you are going to spend some time bent over; you will experience some aches and pains. But it is in the willingness to accept this discomfort that we strike the most telling blow against the power plants and what they represent.

  Wendell Berry

  Time, Pain, Acceptance

• A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us... What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of earth, but also the earth's ability to produce.

  Wendell Berry

  Home, Garden, Practice

• The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures of Eating)

  Wendell Berry

  Morning, Memories, Garden

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.151, Counterpoint Press

• I finally knew... why Christ's prayer in the garden could not be granted. He had been seeded and birthed into human flesh. He was one of us. Once He had become mortal, He could not become immortal except by dying. That He prayed the prayer at all showed how human He was. That He knew it could not be granted showed his divinity; that He prayed it anyhow showed His mortality, His mortal love of life that His death made immortal.

  Wendell Berry

  Prayer, Love Life, Garden

• The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming, whose hands reach into the ground and sprout, to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

  Wendell Berry

  Lying, Men, Garden

  Wendell Berry (2011). “Farming: A Hand Book”, p.15, Counterpoint Press

• The incarnate Word is with us, is still speaking, is present always, yet leaves no sign but everything that is.

  Wendell Berry

  Garden, Stills

  Wendell Berry (2013). “This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979 - 2012”, p.203, Counterpoint

• O Thou, Far off and here, whole and broken, Who in necessity and in bounty wait, Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken, By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

  Wendell Berry

  Dark, Garden, Light

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.242, Counterpoint Press

• The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain.

  Wendell Berry

  Rain, Garden, Two

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