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I [Maria] was born and raised in the world of plants, having grown up on (and eventually running) my family’s 1,000-acre wholesale nursery and retail garden center businesses. During these years, whether I was working wholesale or retail, I noticed a common denominator: many of the wonderful people we hired and added to our staff had no background, let alone formal training, in the field of horticulture. There was a lot of green-industry plant jargon they had never heard before and they had to try and learn it as quickly as possible to do their job. It was always in the back of my mind to create a section in our company manual for “hort lingo,” but for a variety of reasons it never became a reality. Yet my observation kept me thinking . . . someday.

My professional career changed course and I began to write more frequently for industry trade journals and consumer gardening magazines. As I wrote articles – in particular those directed to home gardeners – I often wondered how gardeners managed to wade through unknown terminology to understand what these new words meant. My idea of creating a book of gardening terms turned into an itch that needed scratching.

I went to my friend and colleague Pam Bennett at The Ohio State University and ran my book idea past her. She grew the idea further (bad pun intended); she thought a book of this type would also be useful for Master Gardener Volunteers, as well the younger generation who are just starting to garden. Knowing we had similar conversational writing styles, I asked her to join me on this adventure that has become Garden-pedia.

Getting beyond the “what” to the “why” and “how”

We had both had the same experiences when researching terms we didn’t know, whether it was for a written article or to be used when teaching: the definitions we came across were dry and technical in nature. It made for painful, boring reading. Sometimes, the definition created more questions than answers; other times, the definition was just that – a definition, but it didn’t include real life examples that a gardener could easily relate to. We aimed to fix that.

One of our biggest challenges was that there are so many words that we could have picked to include in this book. Horticulture and gardening covers a broad area of topics – from ornamental plants, fruits and vegetables, tropical plants, seed, sod, soil, to everything in-between. Each of these topic areas can be broken down even further. What to do? Our approach was to look at the most common terms that people ask us about in our daily travels, presentations and classes. Now, after countless back-and-forth phone calls, emails, and conversations, we think we have come up with an easy-reference definition book that clearly explains more than 300 of the most useful garden terms – chosen for the one purpose of getting you gardening with confidence.

So yes, there could be terms you feel we missed. If so, let us know! We want you to keep us on our toes. Contact us with additional words that you feel are important and we can consider adding to our next edition. Challenge us to define some of those terms that are difficult to define. Believe us, there were some gardening terms that even with all our years of practice, we struggled with putting the term on paper (see the definition for shade!).

Finally, we want you to know that the information in this book is drawn from our own combined 77 years (holy cow, maybe we should add those years again – we aren’t that old) of personal experience in horticulture and our ongoing dedication and passion to helping gardeners be better informed with sound gardening information based on science.

Our wish for you

The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus said, “From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.” Our greatest hope is that this book helps you build a strong foundation for gardening – for your own personal pleasure or as the base for some level of a career in the green industry – and inspires you to keep digging deeper to learn more.

In closing, have fun, get dirty, learn lots, live long, play in the rain; and may your garden or your gardening career prosper.

Maria and Pam