Want to talk like a gardener? Master these two all-purpose phrases: “The weather has really done a number on my tomatoes this year,” and “More mulch.” The first applies every summer, whether the weather has been good or bad. The second is something every gardener always needs.
But if your goal is not only to make gardening-style noises but to read catalogs, gardening books and nursery tags the way a gardener does–which means understanding their shorthand and jargon–you might need a brief vocabulary lesson.
The common language of home horticulture isn’t hard to master; the list of essential terms is comparatively short and straightforward. As the first installment in this monthly series of “gardening fundamentals” articles, the vocabulary lesson is designed to get you up to speed with a working knowledge of a few terms that every gardener runs into regularly. In the coming months, this series will cover other gardening fundamentals, such as how to design a garden bed, the total lawn-care program, and recognizing and controlling common pest insects.
With these words under your belt, you’ll have taken an important first step toward truly understanding what makes one plant flourish in one garden but not another. The terms on this list are just a start, of course. Because serious gardening blends elements of science and art, a gardener’s vocabulary multiplies with every plant planted, every growing season survived. For advanced vocabulary help, the National Gardening Association Dictionary of Horticulture (published by Viking, New York; $29.95 in hard cover, $16.95 in paperback, to be available this spring) is a valuable resource.
Annual and perennial. Annuals live one year; perennials grow again year after year (although not endlessly; many need to be replaced after several years). Because annuals know their days are numbered, they put all their energy into creating seeds for the next generation. Flowers are the primary vehicle for seeds, so annuals generally bloom early and often. Annuals are most often used for showy effect in large, prominent garden beds, such as those that frame the front walk to a house. By comparison, perennials have the luxury of time, and they take it. Most spend their first growing season working on their roots, so they’ll have something from which to re-grow after the winter. That makes them far less showy the first–and sometimes even the second–year in a garden. Once they’ve established themselves, though, many perennial varieties are as flashy as annuals.
Perennials don’t have to wear themselves out blooming, so most have far shorter bloom periods than annuals; the tradeoff is that their blooms may be more elaborate, more fragrant and more distinctive. (Some tropical perennials are sold as annuals in Chicago’s nurseries because of the harsh local climate.)
As it’s usually used, the term “perennial” refers to herbaceous perennials–plants whose limbs are soft and flexible, without bark or wood and that die back once a year (usually in winter), then regenerate themselves from the ground level. But technically “perennial” also includes all woody perennials–any trees or shrubs with hard branches and stems that survive above ground through the winter and generate buds or leaves in the spring and summer.
You may also run across a tender perennial. This is a plant that in its home climate is a perennial but in a colder place needs help surviving winter–possibly from a warm blanket of evergreen boughs heaped atop it for the winter, or by being dug up and kept indoors, potted, through the cold months.
Annuals may be described as direct-seeded or transplants. The first means you can sow the seeds outdoors where you want the plants to grow, and you’ll get a show of flowers by season’s end. The second means the plant requires a longer growing season than is available in your climate and should be either grown from seed indoors and then moved outside or bought from a nursery already well on its way to blooming.
Between annuals and perennials is the odd biennial, a plant that blooms in its second year but doesn’t come back afterward.
Deadheading, in gardener-speak, has nothing to do with wearing tie-dyed shirts or listening to a band from the ’60s. Gardeners who deadhead encourage their flowering plants to stay in bloom by picking off faded and spent flowers.
A plant’s genus and species are its scientific last name (given first) and first name (given last). The genus is a larger category, usually containing several species. Together, the two make up the Latin name, which is usually a better term to know than the lovelier common name. Some plants go by several different common names, but the Latin name stays the same.
A plant with three words in its Latin name is a cultivar or hybrid. Plant scientists have bred successive offspring of a species to highlight one quality, such as taste of the fruit or color of the flower. Usually, it will do you no good to harvest the seeds of a plant cultivar; the plants they spawn won’t look the same as the parent. If growing the children of your garden plants is important to you, start with heirloom or open-pollinated seeds. Both terms mean that the plants are exactly as they occurred in the natural machine; science hasn’t tinkered with them.
Shrubs and trees that lose their leaves in the fall are deciduous. Those that don’t are evergreens. Not all evergreens are green or look like Christmas trees. There are broad-leafed evergreens, plants with leaves–as opposed to needles–that stay on the plant year-round. Rhododendrons are broad-leafed evergreens.
Every plant choice depends on the site’s climate, light and soil conditions.
The Chicago area is all in Zone 5, a number to keep in mind when reading any plant’s hardiness requirements. Usually a plant is hardy in a range of zones. As long as it includes 5, the plant should be able to withstand both winter and summer here. It’s also important to have a little knowledge of your yard’s microclimate, or special characteristics that might slightly alter its ability to host a particular plant. A small yard surrounded by masonry walls, for example, may be slightly warmer than the prevailing climate because winds are kept out.
Plants’ light requirements are their most elemental demands. Give a plant the wrong amount of sun–whether too much or too little–and it can’t live. If a plant wants full sun, that’s what it means, all sun all day. Partial sun means no shade for at least five hours a day. Partial shade may sound like the same thing (if one part is sun, the other has to be shade), but it isn’t; instead, it means that the plant is never completely exposed to the sun and is always in filtered shade, or the dappled, spotty shade cast by a loose-limbed tree. Full shade means no sun hits the plant; it grows close to the north side of a building or under the dense canopy of a forest.
Soil that is loamy is loose and easy to turn with a spade or pitchfork. Soil in the Chicago area is usually not loamy on its own. It’s more likely to be clay, or made up of fine particles that pack tightly together. To create suitably loamy soil, add humus, or decaying plant matter, to loosen it up. Humus comes in the form of homemade compost, is sold in bags in nurseries, and in some cases can be as simple as working one autumn’s leaves into the soil of a part of the garden.
Finally, a few words about how and where plants go. Foundation plantings, usually shrubs and low trees, hug the skirt of a house. They attempt to soften the hard, angular transition from horizontal lawn to vertical wall. A specimen planting usually stands by itself; it is a plant chosen for its dramatic shape or bloom and placed in the garden as a dramatic focal point rather than being expected to blend into the overall green backdrop. The orderly British gardens from which most American gardens descend rely heavily on borders, or ornamental beds that showcase groups of plants that look good together. Some gardeners create perennial borders, others annual borders and still others shrub borders. The mixed border isn’t concerned as much with plant categories as with putting plants together because they show well together.
Next month: The basic rules of designing a garden bed.
