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Common Gardening terms

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Gardening glossary of terms

When you’re new to gardening, you might not understand all of the terms that are used on the various gardening websites that you might encounter so I thought that it might be a great idea to post some of the more common terms and explain them.

Annual: a plant that completes it life cycle in one growing season and then dies. Keep in mind that annuals for one region of the Country may be a perennial in another region, or even in another Country.

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. The Hardiness zones in Canada are rated differently than those of US regions, keep that in mind when you read up on hardiness zones. If you are purchasing a plant in Canada that was shipped in from the states know your USD zones.

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.






Annuals and Perennials

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What are Annual, Perennial and Biennial plants?

The difference between annuals, biennials and perennials relates to the life cycles of the plants.

Annuals grow from seed to full maturity within one growing season. Marigolds, ageratums, and zinnias are typical annuals. They flower, set seed and die, all within a single year.

Biennials such as Canterbury bells and some foxgloves, complete their life cycles over two years, sometimes producing a few flowers in the first season, but most often just making foliage growth and establishing their root systems.

Perennials live longer than two seasons and may outlive many shrubs. In fact, strictly speaking, shrubs and trees are perennials, but when gardeners talk of perennials they generally mean plants that don’t develop permanent woody stems.

Perennials occur in several types. Some, such as Acanthus, are evergreen and don’t have a period of total dormancy, though few flower continually except in very mild climates.

Herbaceous perennials – those most common in temperate climate gardens – usually have a period of dormancy when they die back to a permanent rootstock. Most commonly this is during winter, but plants from hot dry areas many be dormant in summer or during periods of very low rainfall.

Some herbaceous perennials have developed the ability to use their roots or stems as food storage organs to enable them to survive extended periods of dormancy. Known as rhizomes and tubers, these storage roots can often be separated from the parent plant and grown on as new plants, in much the same way as bulbs and corms. Dahlias and alstroemerias are well-known tuberous plants, while bearded irises are probably the most widely grown rhizomatous plants. Some plants have specialized rhizomes known as stolons, which spread across the surface of the ground, or just below the surface, taking root as they spread.

Some perennials are treated as annuals, either because they cease to be attractive as they age, or because they are incapable of surviving cold winters. Petunias and impatiens, for example, may live for several seasons if protected from frost, but they become leggy and untidy, so they are usually replaced annually.

It is not uncommon for a genus to contain both annual and perennial species, such as the annual and perennial cosmos, or species with differing growth habits, like the fibrous and tuberous rooted irises and begonias.

In cultivation, the differences between annuals, biennials and the various types of perennials tend to become blurred. The important thing is how you use the plants, and with annuals and perennials you can give free rein to your imagination.

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