At one time or another every gardener has been thrown a gardening term that is not understood. Sometimes we ask for a definition and sometimes we guess at what the term means. In today’s article I will explain some of the gardening terms that are used often or occasionally in the gardening world.
Annual: a plant that completes it life cycle in one growing season and then dies. (Annuals for one region of the country may be a perennial in another region.)
Biennial: a plant that completes its life cycle in two growing seasons and then dies. (Generally, the first year the plant produces foliage and the 2nd year the plant flowers.)
Bulbs: fleshy leaf bases consisting of scales attached to a basal plate; tulips are one example.
Conifer: mostly evergreen trees or shrubs, usually with needle-like linear leaves and seeds borne naked on the scales of cones.
Deadheading: removing spent flowers or flowerheads for aesthetics, to prolong bloom or promote rebloom, or to prevent seeding.
Feng Shui: the ancient Chinese art of design and placement that balances the chi, or energies, within your surroundings.
Golden Mean: the ration 1:1.618 and a rule of proportion common throughout nature that can be applied to garden design.
Hardiness Zone: determined by the average annual frost-free days and minimum winter temperatures. (Isanti County is Zone 3.)
Herbaceous: a plant without woody stem; the plant parts are fleshy and wither after each growing season.
Mixed garden: a garden that is planted with combinations of herbaceous and woody plant material.
Neutral colors: green, violet, black, white, gray, brown.
Perennial: a plant that lives three or more years.
Primary hues: red, yellow, blue.
Rhizomes: swollen, horizontal undergrown stem; cannas are examples.
Suckering: describes plant material with adventitious shoots arising from below soil level, usually from the roots rather than the crown or stem of the plant.
Tuber: a swollen, irregularly shaped stem or root used for food storage; dahlias are one example.
Vascular plants: plants such as ferns and seed-bearing plants in which the phloem transports sugar and the xylem transports water and salts.
Warmer colors: yellow, yellow-green, yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, red, and red-violet (magenta).
Woody: A vascular plant that has a stem (or more than one stem). Woody plants are trees, shrubs, etc. Most woody plants will be composed mostly of wood.
I hope this short list of terms will clarify your understanding of gardening terms when you do your gardening reading or during your conversations with other gardeners.
Resource: The Well-Designed Mixed Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust
— For more information, go to HYPERLINK “http://www.extension.umn.edu” www.extension.umn.edu or contact the Isanti County Master Gardeners at the Extension Office by calling 763-689-1810.
