Sustainable gardening includes the more specific sustainable landscapes, sustainable landscape design, sustainable landscaping, sustainable landscape architecture, resulting in sustainable sites. It comprises a disparate group of horticultural interests that can share the aims and objectives associated with the international post-1980s sustainable development and sustainability programs developed to address the fact that humans are now using…
A winter garden is a kind of garden maintained in wintertime. The origin of the winter garden dates back to the 17th to 19th centuries where European nobility would construct large conservatories that would house tropical and subtropical plants and would act as an extension of their living space. Many of these would be attached…
World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD) is an annual international event generally celebrated on the first Saturday of May by gardeners and non-gardeners alike. WNGD was founded and organized by Mark Storey (consulting editor for Nude & Natural magazine) and permaculturalist Jacob Gabriel, as a project of Body Freedom Collaborative (BFC). In its early days, Storey…
Image by/from Mike Grant and Rita Heaton The Plantsman (rebranded from September 2019 as The Plant Review), published quarterly by the Royal Horticultural Society, was a 68-page magazine “dedicated to a deeper understanding and appreciation of garden plants”. Its authoritative articles were written by acknowledged experts on plant-related subjects, including plant profiles, horticulture, botany and…
Image by/from Rictor Norton & David Allen A stumpery is a garden feature similar to a rockery but made from parts of dead trees. This can take the form of whole stumps, logs, pieces of bark or even worked timber such as railway sleepers or floorboards. The pieces are arranged artistically and plants, typically ferns,…
Vegetable farming is the growing of vegetables for human consumption. The practice probably started in several parts of the world over ten thousand years ago, with families growing vegetables for their own consumption or to trade locally. At first manual labour was used but in time livestock were domesticated and the ground could be turned…
Upside-down gardening is a hanging vegetable garden being the suspension of soil and seedlings of a kitchen garden to stop pests and blight, and eliminate the typical gardening tasks of tilling, weeding, and staking plants. The vegetable growing yield is only marginally affected. Kathi (Lael) Morris was the first known to grow tomatoes and peppers…
Image by/from KoS Pruning shears, also called hand pruners (in American English), or secateurs, are a type of scissors for use on plants. They are strong enough to prune hard branches of trees and shrubs, sometimes up to two centimetres thick. They are used in gardening, arboriculture, plant nursery works, farming, flower arranging, and nature…
Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany during World War I and World War II. George Washington Carver wrote an agricultural tract and promoted the idea of what…
Square foot gardening is the practice of dividing the growing area into small square sections, typically 1 foot (30 cm) on a side, hence the name. The aim is to assist the planning and creating of a small but intensively planted vegetable garden. It results in a simple and orderly gardening system, from which it draws…
Xeriscaping is the process of landscaping or gardening that reduces or eliminates the need for supplemental water from irrigation. It is promoted in regions that do not have accessible, plentiful, or reliable supplies of fresh water and is gaining acceptance in other regions as access to irrigation water is becoming limited. Xeriscaping may be an…
