Gertrude Jekyll Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
The duty we owe to our gardens is to so use the plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; and that, while delighting our eyes.

Gertrude Jekyll
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
To devise these living pictures with simple well-known flowers seems to me to be the best thing to do in gardening.

Gertrude Jekyll
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
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
Paint upon a palette, delighting our eyes with soul-satisfying pictures, a treasure of well set jewels a sympathy with growing things, fashioned into a dream of beauty, a place of perfect rest and refreshment of mind and body. This sense of beauty is a gift of God.

Gertrude Jekyll
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
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
I am strongly of the opinion that possession of plants, however good, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection.

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

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

Gertrude Jekyll
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
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
I plant rosemary all over the garden, so pleasant is it to know that at every few steps one may draw the kindly branchlets through one's hand, and have the enjoyment of their incomparable incense; and I grow it against walls, so that the sun may draw out its inexhaustible sweetness to greet me as I pass.

Gertrude Jekyll