The metaphor is Peter Lynch’s, coined in One Up On Wall Street (Simon and Schuster, 1989), where Quote Investigator’s verified scan of page 245 reads “pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds.” Warren Buffett did write the “cutting” version — in Berkshire Hathaway’s 1988 chairman’s letter, dated 28 February 1989 — but he credited Lynch by name in the very same sentence. The tidy imperative that circulates today matches neither man’s documented wording.
“Don't cut your flowers and water your weeds” Not Warren Buffett. Peter Lynch coined the flowers-and-weeds metaphor in One Up On Wall Street (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), chap. 16, p. 245, where it reads "pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds." Buffett wrote "cutting the flowers and watering the weeds" in Berkshire Hathaway's 1988 chairman's letter, dated 28 February 1989 — and credited Lynch in the same sentence. The imperative "Don't cut your flowers and water your weeds" appears in neither text. — Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Warren Buffett. Use the credit shown above instead.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Peter Lynch — American investor, fund manager and author. Theme: "Don't cut your flowers and water your weeds". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Don't cut your flowers and water your weeds". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the wording actually comes from
Coined in
One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market
Published
Peter Lynch with John Rothchild — Simon and Schuster, 1989; chap. 16, “Designing a Portfolio,” p. 245. Wording there: “pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds.”
Quoted by Buffett in
Berkshire Hathaway 1988 Chairman’s Letter, dated 28 February 1989 — with credit to Lynch in the same sentence
Popular wording
No identified author — the imperative form matches neither the book nor the letter. Earliest documented instance: an investing-rules column in the News Messenger (Marshall, Texas), 17 September 1995
In 1988 we made major purchases of Federal Home Loan Mortgage Pfd. (“Freddie Mac”) and Coca Cola. We expect to hold these securities for a long time. In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever. We are just the opposite of those who hurry to sell and book profits when companies perform well but who tenaciously hang on to businesses that disappoint. Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.
The credit is in the sentence
From the “Marketable Securities” section of Warren Buffett’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, dated 28 February 1989. This is where the “cutting” wording everybody repeats comes from — and it arrives already attributed to Peter Lynch. In Lynch’s own book the flowers are pulled out rather than cut.
1913 to 1986 — the gardening image is already a commonplace, long before anyone applies it to stocks: “like watering the weeds in the garden” in the Abilene Daily Reflector (1913), “Stop watering your weeds. Start killing them.” in an El Paso Times herbicide advertisement (1978), and a sermon titled “DON’T WATER YOUR WEEDS” reported in the St. Petersburg Times (1986), all documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
1989 — Peter Lynch, with John Rothchild, coins the investing version in One Up On Wall Street (Simon and Schuster), chap. 16, p. 245: selling winners and holding losers is about as sensible as “pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds.” Quote Investigator verified the page with scans and concludes Lynch coined it (Quote Investigator ↗).
28 February 1989 — Warren Buffett signs Berkshire Hathaway’s 1988 chairman’s letter, which contains the “cutting” variant inside an explicit credit: “Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds” (Berkshire Hathaway ↗).
17 September 1995 — the imperative wording appears in print for the first time on the documented record, with no author claimed for it: rule six of “Timeless rules for equity investors” by Bob Smith in the News Messenger of Marshall, Texas — “Don’t cut your flowers and water your weeds. Don’t sell a stock simply to take a profit, and don’t keep a stock simply because it was once attractive” (Quote Investigator ↗).
Since — the crediting half of Buffett’s sentence falls away and the image is republished under his name, often in that imperative form. Quote Investigator opens its investigation by noting that “this saying has been attributed to super-investor Warren Buffett and successful fund manager Peter Lynch” (Quote Investigator ↗). Finance-press retellings that reproduce Buffett’s sentence in full keep the Lynch credit attached to it (The Motley Fool ↗).
Both documented sources are modern and still protected. One Up On Wall Street was first published by Simon & Schuster in 1989 ↗, and Buffett’s 1988 chairman’s letter ↗ is dated 28 February 1989 — both far later than 1931, so neither is public domain, however freely the letter is posted online. The popular imperative rewrite has no identified author of its own, which is a reason to treat it cautiously rather than a reason to treat it as free.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
A misattribution the ‘culprit’ tried to prevent
Buffett is the name this line travels under, and his 28 February 1989 letter is the earliest documented use of the “cutting” wording — Lynch’s book has “pulling out” — but he wrote it as a credit to somebody else. The mis-crediting happened downstream, when quoters kept the image and dropped the attribution sitting in the same sentence.
✕
The whole lineWarren Buffett Most common
Buffett wrote “cutting the flowers and watering the weeds” in Berkshire Hathaway’s 1988 chairman’s letter — but the full sentence is “Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds” (Berkshire Hathaway, 28 February 1989 ↗). Quote Investigator’s conclusion is that Buffett “used a version of the saying, but he credited Lynch” (Quote Investigator ↗).
✕
The exact wordingNo identified author Reworded
The imperative “Don’t cut your flowers and water your weeds” is not in either primary text. Lynch’s book reads “pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds,” and Quote Investigator notes that the phrasing “has evolved over time to produce multiple variants.” The earliest instance of the imperative that Quote Investigator records is rule six of an investing-rules column in the News Messenger of Marshall, Texas, on 17 September 1995 — nobody there claims to have coined it (Quote Investigator ↗).
~
The verb, even in Lynch’s own mouthPeter Lynch, quoting himself Drifted
When Lynch retells the story he uses the “cutting” wording, not the “pulling out” that Quote Investigator verified with scans of page 245. His 2017 Forbes India account is reproduced by Benzinga ↗. That the book and the letter differ is simply what the two documents show.
✕
The garden metaphor itselfAnonymous, long before either man Older image
Quote Investigator records the figure of speech circulating well before anyone applied it to stocks — “like watering the weeds in the garden” in the Abilene Daily Reflector (1913), “Stop watering your weeds. Start killing them.” in an El Paso Times herbicide advertisement (1978), and a sermon by minister Allan R. Stuart titled “DON’T WATER YOUR WEEDS” reported in the St. Petersburg Times (1986) (Quote Investigator ↗). What Lynch coined was its use as investment advice.
✓Peter Lynch coined it in One Up On Wall Street in 1989; Buffett borrowed it for Berkshire’s 1988 letter and said whose it was; and the version everyone repeats is a later rewrite of what either of them actually wrote (Quote Investigator ↗).
Context
Why Buffett gets the credit
Almost every misattribution works by silence — a good line drifts loose from a forgotten author and settles on a famous one. This one is stranger, because the famous man did the opposite of stealing it. Buffett read Lynch’s new book, wanted the image badly enough to put it in Berkshire’s annual report, and named Lynch in the sentence where he used it.
What happened is that Buffett’s shareholder letters get quoted far more often than mid-book paragraphs in an investing paperback. Strip away the crediting half of Buffett’s sentence and you are left with seven words in a Buffett document — which is exactly how the line now circulates. Lynch has told the story of Buffett phoning him at home to ask permission to borrow it, and has said of it, “That one line he picked up in my whole book has been the greatest mistake” — the error the line describes, selling winners too soon, being one he made himself.
Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.
What the line actually argues
Buffett’s paragraph makes the meaning plain. It sits in the “Marketable Securities” section of the 1988 letter, two sentences later in the same paragraph as the line for which that letter is best known: “In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.” The flowers-and-weeds image is the mirror of that — a rebuke to investors who lock in small gains on their best holdings while nursing their worst ones.
It is worth noticing that the two documented versions use different verbs. Lynch’s book pulls the flowers out; Buffett’s letter cuts them. When Lynch has retold the anecdote in later years he quotes himself using the letter’s verb — a small, human illustration of how a wording drifts even in the mouth of the person who invented it.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 19 January 1944 · American investor, fund manager and author
Peter Lynch ran Fidelity’s Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, averaging a 29.2% annual return and turning a small fund into the best-known one in America. His 1989 bestseller One Up On Wall Street, written with John Rothchild, argued that ordinary people already know enough to pick good stocks — and it is where the flowers-and-weeds line comes from.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Coined in
Peter Lynch with John Rothchild, One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), chap. 16, “Designing a Portfolio,” 245 — where the wording is “pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds” (citation verified with scans by Quote Investigator). The “cutting” wording is first documented in Warren E. Buffett, “Chairman’s Letter,” Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 1988 Annual Report, dated 28 February 1989, which credits Lynch in the same sentence. The imperative form “Don’t cut your flowers and water your weeds” has no documented source in either text; the earliest instance Quote Investigator records is Bob Smith, “Timeless rules for equity investors,” News Messenger (Marshall, Texas), 17 September 1995, 2D, where it appears as rule six.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Don't cut your flowers and water your weeds’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/dont-cut-your-flowers-and-water-your-weeds/