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, The Essential Earthman, 1981

Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it. – S.J. Perelman, Acres and Pains, 1951

Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. – Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thanks, Jessica)

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. – Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871