Garden-Pedia. Pamela Bennett
from Maria
With much love and deep gratitude to my father, Jim Zampini, who is my business partner, best friend, mentor, cheerleader and fellow hortaholic day-in and day-out – how lucky can one girl be?!; to my mother, Margaret Zampini, for her behind-the-scenes, never-ending strength and support of both me and my family; to my family and friends (and definitely my co-author Pam Bennett), for their unselfish assistance, encouragement and belief in me, especially when I had just about lost all faith in myself; and lastly, to Paul Kelly, who gently prodded me along until I finally said “yes” to writing this book and making my simple idea a reality.
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TABLE of CONTENTS
Introduction: How Garden-pedia Came To Be
A Few Words about Latin and Common Names
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INTRODUCTION
How Garden-pedia came to be
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
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A FEW WORDS about LATIN and COMMON NAMES
Being horticulturists, we understand the value of using scientific Latin names when it comes to talking about a specific plant species. There is one scientific Latin name assigned per plant species and that one name is recognized worldwide. No room for confusion. When talking to green industry professionals, we attempt to use the Latin name as often as possible, especially when ordering plants for a job or for growing in the nursery. This ensures that both parties are referring to the same plant.
Gailardia x grandiflora (blanketflower)
However, Garden-pedia is not only for people in the industry; it’s for everyone, including (maybe even especially) the gardening beginner. So, how to keep it simple enough and accurate enough, and not clutter the pages with too much scientific Latin? And why not just use common names all the time? Because sometimes one plant can have many common names, depending on the region of the country or world in which it is growing. There are a good number of plants that don’t even have a common name (and people make up common names as they go along, too!). Let us give you an example: Someone walks into the garden center and tells the clerk they want to purchase a red maple. Does the garden clerk sell them a red maple (Acer rubrum), or a crimson king red maple (Acer platanoides ‘Crimson King’), or even a Japanese red maple (Acer palmatum ‘Ruby Red’)? Clearly, common names don’t always get you to the plant you want. In this case, a little Latin is just what you need.