Garden Words and Descriptions

Alcove - Shallow recess in a wall or hedge, or a building in which to sit or stand a potted plant or artifact.
Allée - Formal path flanked by trees or hedges terminated often by a focal point or opening up a vista.
Annual - Plant that completes its life cycle in one year.
Arboretum - A place where trees or shrubs are cultivated for their scientific or educational interest.
Arbour - Leafy glade or bower shaded by trees, vines, shrubs etc, especially when trained about a trellis.
Arts & Crafts - Early 20th century movement of the arts which opposed the increasing mass production and sameness of factory-made products.
Auricular theatre - Theatre shaped like an ear.
Aviary - Large enclosure for keeping birds.
Baroque - Style of architecture and decorative art that flourished throughout Europe from the late 16th to the early 18th century, characterized by extensive ornamentation.
Bassin - Ornamental, formal pool, tank or reservoir usually lined and edged with stone; often found in French formal gardens.
Bastion - Projecting work in a wall or fortification.
Bath house - Indoor or outdoor formal pool fed by a spring or stream
Belvedere - Summerhouse or roofed gallery sited to command a fine view.
Biennial - Plant that flowers and dies in its second season after germination, producing only stems, roots and leaves in its first season.
Bog garden - Area where the soil is kept permanently damp but not waterlogged.
Bosquet - Grove, plantation or thicket of trees intersected by paths or rides in formal French gardens, often with ornamental statuary placed at strategic points.
Bower - Shady, leafy shelter or recess, as in a wood or garden.
Broderie - Intricate arabesque designs in clipped box set in coloured gravel in a parterre, like embroidery. Fashionable in French formal gardens from the 17th century.
Canal - Artificial ornamental waterway.
Carpet bedding - Close planting in patterns and colours of varying complexity. Being labour intensive, it is not now common.
Cascade - Artificial waterfall.
Chadar - Water chute carved with patterns to break the flow of water making it sparkle. (Mughal)
Ch'i - Chinese universal life force found in all living things. Good Ch'i, especially around the main entrance, brings happiness to the home.
Chinoiserie - Eighteenth and nineteenth century imitations of Chinese garden motifs and techniques.
Clairvoyée - Gap in a wall or hedge, openwork gate, fence or grille, allowing a glimpse of the surrounding countryside.
Colonnade - A set of evenly spaced columns.
Cool border - A border planted with flowers of cool colours; white, blue, pale yellow.
Coppice - A thicket or dense growth of small trees or bushes, especially one regularly trimmed back to stumps to provide a continual supply of small poles or firewood.
Cottage orné - Picturesque rustic dwelling to ornament a park or garden.
Cultivars - A contraction of 'cultivated varieties'. Naming is governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants. Printed in Roman type between quotes.
Elysian (fields) - The Greek mythical dwelling place of the blessed after death.
English landscape style - A general gardening style of the 18th century, made popular by Englishman 'Capability' Brown.
Ericaceous - Type of soil or compost for acid loving (pH less than 7) plants.
Espalier - A training form for fruit trees, usually along wires.
Exedra - A building, room, portico or apse containing a continuous bench, used in ancient Greece and Rome for holding discussions.
Fastigate - Columnar with erect branches.
Feng shui - Chinese word meaning geomancy which is the divination of the good and evil properties that emanate from a site that enable one to determine if it is an auspicious place to build a house or garden.
Flowery Mead - Grass studded with wild flowers and cut two or three times a year in a medieval garden.
Folly - A decorative building with no serious function other than to lure attention or to assist the composition of the garden 'picture'
Formal French style - A 17th-century gardening style characterized by geometry and symmetry made fashionable by Frenchman Le Nôtre.
Gardenesque style - A late 18th-century gardening style in which each plant is isolated and displayed to its best advantage as adopted latterly by Loudon (1783-1843). Trees and shrubs are arranged according to their kinds and dimensions. They are planted at first at, or, as they grow, thinned out to, such distances apart as may best display the natural form and habitat of each.
Victorian style of garden which combined a mixture of styles, often with a noticeable lack of unity.
Garden room - A compartment in a garden defined by walls or hedges.
Garth - Old word for a small enclosure.
Gazebo - A small building or arbour from which to view the garden and countryside.
Genus - Part of a plant 'family'. It may in turn contain one or more 'species'.
Gazon coupé - Turf cut into shapes and filled with gravel.
Gnomon - The stationary arm that projects the shadow on a sundial.
Gothick - An 18th century gardening style based on medieval architectural ideal.
Grotto - A construction in the form of a cave, especially as in 18th century landscaped gardens.
Grove - A small group of trees, usually of one species, either growing naturally or artificially planted.
Ha-ha - A sunk fence or wall bordering a garden of park, that allows uninterrupted views from within, while keeping livestock out.
Herbaceous - Designating or relating to plants or plant parts that are fleshy as opposed to woody.
Herm - A squared stone pillar on a tapering base with a head (originally of Hermes but later of any god or important person) on top, used as a boundary marker.
Hermitage - A rustic building popular in the 18th century, supposedly as a hermit's retreat.
Hortus - Latin word for a garden
Hot bed - Victorian deep frame where hot manure provides bottom heat for young plants under glass.
Hot border - A border planted with flowers of hot colours; red, orange, dark yellow.
Hybrid - Plant resulting from a cross between genetically unlike individuals.
Ice House - Before households had refrigerators, the only source of ice was from the surface of a lake in winter, which was stored in underground chambers for later in the year.
Jekyllesque - Tonal garden style of planting in which flowers and foliage of a single dominant colour were grown. The herbaceous border in which the colours are so controlled that they are all tonally related in shades of silver, or white (the dullest) or yellow or blue.
Kentissimo - In the style typical of painter, architect and landscape gardener William Kent.
Kiosk - A location in ancient Turkish gardens for sitting and reclining while contemplating the view.
Knot garden - Low growing hedges in intricate design using clipped box, santolina, lavender and other bushy plants. Common in 16th-century English gardens.
Loggia - A covered area on the side of a building.
Lunettes - semi-circular panel paintings of Italian Renaissance gardens of Medici villas by Flemish painter Giusto Utens (?-1609).
Mannerist - An Italian movement in art and architecture between High Renaissance and Baroque periods (1520-1600) that sought to represent an ideal of beauty rather than natural images of it using distortion, exaggeration and perspective.
Marginal water plant - A plant that grows partially submerged in shallow water or in moist soil at the edge of a pond or stream.
Mausoleum - A tomb or building housing tombs.
Maze (Labyrinth) - A complex network of paths or passages between high hedges or in turf, designed to puzzle those walking through it.
Mead - Meadow.
Moat - A water channel surrounding a castle or house for defence or ornament.
Moon Gate - A circular opening in a garden door or wall.
Moon Pond - Formal pond in the form of a crescent or semi-circle.
Mozaiculture - Artistic structures of growing plants.
Mount - An artificial hill from which to view a garden or landscape.
Nymphaeum - A grotto or shrine, usually composed of fountains supposedly the home of the nymphs. A pond with (white) water lilies
Obelisk - Tall, thin column tapering to a point, often commemorative.
Orangery - Light and airy garden building purpose-built to cultivate orange trees.
Order beds - Beds in a botanic garden where plants are laid out in a systematic way according to botanical family.
Pagoda - An Indian or Far Eastern Buddhist temple, especially a tower, usually pyramidal and having many storeys (Portuguese).
Palladian - Having the symmetrical style of architecture of Andrea Palladio
Pa-kua - Nine boxes inside the magic square relating to different areas of life, which may be placed over your property. (Chinese)
Patte d'Oie - A series of usually three formal paths or avenues leading fanwise from a single point through densely planted trees (French).
Parterre - An intricately patterned formal garden which often includes other features such as statuary, water basins and fountains (French).
Pavilion - A summerhouse or other decorative shelter. A large ornate tent.
Peat bed - A specially constructed area edged with peat blocks and containing moisture-retentive, acidic, peaty soil.
Perennial - A woody or herbaceous plant that continues its growth for at least three years.
Pergola - A horizontal trellis or framework, supported on posts, that carries climbing plants and may form a covered walk.
pH - The acid value; the scale by which the acidity or alkalinity of soil is measured.
Picturesque - A gardening style of the 18th century which sought to harness the wild beauty of nature as in a painting.
Pinetum - An area of land where pine trees and other conifers are grown.
Pinnate - With leaflets arranged on opposite sides of a central stalk.
Pleach - To train the branches of a row of trees to provide a high level hedge on stilts.
Pleasaunce or Pleasance - An enclosed garden laid out for the purposes of leisure; originally an enclosed medieval hunting park.
Pollard - To cut back to a tree's main branches in order to restrict growth.
Portico - A colonnade; a roof supported by columns at regular intervals and usually attached as a porch to a building.
Potager - An ornamental kitchen garden.
Procumbent - Prostrate, creeping along the ground.
Putto (pl;Putti) - A representation of a small boy, cherub or cupid in baroque sculpture or painting
Quincunx - A pattern of four trees at the corners of a square and one at the centre.
Remontant - Plant with a season's second blooming habit.
Renaissance - Period beginning in Italy in the 14th century of intensified classical scholarship, scientific and geographical discovery and sense of individual human potentialities, and the assertion of the active and secular over the religious and contemplative life.
Rill - Small open topped gulley or water-course.
Robinsonian New Landscape Style - William Robinson's woodland gardening style (1910-1960) where plants are understood and interpreted in relation to their surroundings.
Rococo style - A style of architecture and decoration that originated in France in the early 18th century, characterized by elaborate but graceful, light, ornamentation, often containing asymmetrical motifs, when the overall mood is light-hearted and flamboyant, capturing the pleasure-loving spirit of the age. The word derives from the French words rocaille meaning rock-work and coquille, a shell.
Rotunda - A building or room having a circular plan, in particular one that has a dome.
Scree - An area composed of a deep layer of stone chippings mixed with a small amount of loam.
Serpentine - Wiggly like a serpent.
Shars - Any straight lines or angles which point directly at your house, creating a poison arrow. (Chinese)
Simples - Plants having medicinal properties.
Species - Plant species are usually variable in the wild and may be split into three botanically recognized but occasionally overlapping subdivisions; the subspecies (subsp.), the variety (var.) and the form (forma, f.).
Stilt Hedge - A hedge of trees or shrubs whose trunks are bare beneath the clipped portion.
Stroll Garden style - A style of garden that is designed for walking around and admiring the different vistas, aspects and tableaux as they are presented or revealed.
Sublime - Inspiring deep veneration, awe, or uplifting emotion because of its beauty, nobility, grandeur or immensity.
Systematical planting - Planting according to botanical families such as proposed by Bentham and Hooker at Kew in the nineteenth century.
Tapestry hedge - A hedge comprising more than one genus with contrasting coloured foliage
Tea Garden - A Japanese term for the kind of garden where tea ceremonies are performed.
Terrace - A horizontal flat area of ground, often one of a series on a slope.
Topiary - The clipping of trees or hedges into geometrical or abstract shapes.
Trellis - A structure or pattern of latticework especially one used to support climbing plants.
Tromp-l'Oeil - Painting, decoration or feature giving a convincing illusion of reality.(French)
Tufa - Porous rock composed of calcium carbonate.
Verandah - Porch or portico, sometimes partly enclosed, along the outside of a building. (Hindi)
Versailles Box - Square wooden box on short feet for containing potted plants as at Versailles.
Vista - A long narrow view as between rows of trees or a closely framed view that opens out onto a panoramic prospect.
Wilderness - Planted area between garden and park in landscape gardens from late 17th century.
Xeriscaping - The art of landscaping to reduce water consumption.
Yin and Yang - Opposites which cannot exist without one another, ie male and female, spring and autumn, mountains and plains (Chinese definition).
Zen Buddhism - A form of Buddhism which emphasizes the value of meditation and intuition based on the belief that the path to enlightenment is through power over the self.


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