Hoe (tool)A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural and horticultural hand tool used to shape soil, remove weeds, clear soil, and harvest root crops. Shaping the soil includes piling soil around the base of plants (hilling), digging narrow furrows (drills) and shallow trenches for planting seeds or bulbs. Weeding with a hoe includes agitating the surface of the soil or cutting foliage from roots, and clearing the soil of old roots and crop residues. Hoes for digging and moving soil are used to harvest root crops such as potatoes.
Botanical gardenA botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden with a documented collection of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. Typically plants are labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and other succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, and so on; there may be greenhouses, shadehouses, again with special collections such as tropical plants, alpine plants, or other exotic plants.
Seed savingIn agriculture and gardening, seed saving (sometimes known as brown bagging) is the practice of saving seeds or other reproductive material (e.g. tubers) from vegetables, grain, herbs, and flowers for use from year to year for annuals and nuts, tree fruits, and berries for perennials and trees. This is the traditional way farms and gardens were maintained for the last 12,000 years (see first agricultural revolution). In recent decades, beginning in the latter part of the 20th century, there has been a major shift to purchasing seed annually from commercial seed suppliers.
Organic horticultureOrganic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heirloom variety preservation. The Latin words hortus (garden plant) and cultura (culture) together form horticulture, classically defined as the culture or growing of garden plants. Horticulture is also sometimes defined simply as "agriculture minus the plough".
Landscape architectA landscape architect is a person who is educated in the field of landscape architecture. The practice of landscape architecture includes: site analysis, site inventory, site planning, land planning, planting design, grading, storm water management, sustainable design, construction specification, and ensuring that all plans meet the current building codes and local and federal ordinances. The practice of landscape architecture dates to some of the earliest of human cultures and just as much as the practice of medicine has been inimical to the species and ubiquitous worldwide for several millennia.
Chinese gardenThe Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate gardens created by scholars, poets, former government officials, soldiers and merchants, made for reflection and escape from the outside world. They create an idealized miniature landscape, which is meant to express the harmony that should exist between man and nature.
ArboretumAn arboretum (plural: arboreta) is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, many modern arboreta are in botanical gardens as living collections of woody plants and is intended at least in part for scientific study. In Latin, an arboretum is a place planted with trees, not necessarily in this specific sense, and "arboretum" as an English word is first recorded used by John Claudius Loudon in 1833 in The Gardener's Magazine, but the concept was already long-established by then.
Garden toolA garden tool is any one of many tools made for gardening and landscaping, which overlap with the range of tools made for agriculture and horticulture. Garden tools can be divided into hand tools and power tools. Hand tool Today's garden tools originated with the earliest agricultural implements used by humans. Examples include the hatchet, axe, sickle, scythe, pitchfork, spade, shovel, trowel, hoe, fork, and rake. In some places, the machete is common. The earliest tools were made variously of wood, flint, metal, tin, and bone.
French formal gardenThe French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and widely copied by other European courts. Gardens of the French Renaissance The jardin à la française evolved from the French Renaissance garden, a style which was inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden at the beginning of the 16th century.
TopiaryTopiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, a creator of topia or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco.
