You know how once you click on ONE thing, you immediately start seeing dozens more in your social media feed? Well, my feed has been filling up with gardening T-shirts lately, so I started collecting them – and judging them. Wanna help?
T-Shirts I’d Wear
I like the positive attitude in all of these. Pride in being a gardener.
Nothing objectionable but I wouldn’t wear them
I agree that gardening is therapeutic but cardio it’s NOT. And gardening as one’s social life seems kinda sad.
Not loving gardening as the alternative to violence
Or T-shirts that remind me of you-know-who. Even worse is the lame penis joke.
Not my style
I found a surprising number of anti-social sentiments on gardening tees, which may be protective. Garden hair I don’t get, though I do find “nacho average gardener” adorable. 
Really, really not my style! 
The “I Dig Gardening” shirt I object to solely on aesthetic grounds. (But good news – a quick search for that term yielded designs I like better like this one.
About the others in this group, the messages are crap and I bet some of you agree. But for the rest of you, DO go ahead and display whatever message you want on your own body – you won’t hear me talk about cancellation!
Getting Personal
Poor jokes aside, only one gardening message actually bothers me, and it’s the obnoxious, in-your-face warning that the wearer is judging you for your plant care (and feel free to substitute plant CHOICE here). If it’s happened to you – not silently but loud and clear from someone you’ve invited into your garden – you don’t think this message is funny.
But let’s all leave on a more positive note, shall we? Here’s someone I get to watch grow up to be a gardener, just like her big sister, and an independent thinker at that!
Love this – and am in alignment with your choices, Susan! My one lapse in gardening tee shirt judgement was the impulse purchase of a lovely shirt with about fifty potted flowering plants, beautifully drawn, across the front, with the unfortunate title of “Pot Head” blazoned across the top!
Is there a t-shirt you don’t like that you would gift or bring to a yankee gift swap?
Well, the garden-club gift swap I’m most familiar with prizes raunchy gifts – and none of these are raunchy enough, I’m afraid.
I like the born to play in the dirt message and graphics
I’d agree with you on the “I’d wear these” selection. I may need to get a new one this summer, because now that I think of it, I think I only have two “gardening” related t-shirts, and they’re really randomly specific.
One is for Herbology at Hogwarts Academy, and the other depicts a bee and pollinator-friendly plants entwined with a 12-sided die (from D & D).
Time for a new one.
So Druid (Circle of the Land)
I Dig Gardening. Gardening IS my Social Life. I met all my friends through garden clubs and plant societies.
Grow Where You Are Planted is a favorite. It’s the motto of the military wives that I met in the Officer & Civilian Wives Garden Club. I have a shirt that says So Many Weeds, So Little Time.
I get garden hair. Mine gets full of twigs from crawling around the shrubbery. And I don’t care .Not much on shirts telling strangers about myself. Though I like the compost your enemies. I’d get it just to mess with my husband – the compost pile is just his size.
I need one that says “Get OFF my prairie!”
I often receive these kinds of shirts and mugs as gifts. My favorite piece of gardener-themed clothing is a forest green sweatshirt that has become extra soft after hundreds of washings. Across the front, in simple black print, it says, “Plant Person.” Simple and true!
My would be the warning ‘I stop for plants” My husband has threatened to get one made for me as he is constantly running into me when I stop and stoop to admire a plant.