70 Fun Facts About Gardening

What is a plant that completes its whole life cycle in a single growing season called?

Peas are a classic example; the plant flowers, sets seed and dies within the year.

A biennial plant such as parsley or a Canterbury bell takes how long to complete its life cycle?

The first year is spent growing leaves and roots; flowering and seed come in the second.

In a compost heap, grass clippings and food scraps are the 'green' waste. What are they rich in?

The 'browns', such as woody stalks, paper and wood chips, supply the carbon to balance them.

On a fertiliser bag's N-P-K numbers, what element is K?

The N-P-K trio are the three macronutrients most modern fertilising focuses on.

A soil with a pH reading below 7 is described as what?

Most soils fall between 3 and 10, and blueberries and rhododendrons want the acid end.

The flowers of many hydrangeas act as natural pH indicators. In soil with a low pH, what colour are they?

The same plant turns pink in alkaline soil; the name means 'water vessel' in Greek, after the shape of the seed capsules.

Charles Darwin's last book, published in 1881, was a study of which garden helper?

He estimated an acre of arable land could hold 53,000 of them; modern research puts rich farmland at up to 1.75 million per acre.

What is the horticultural practice of removing spent flowers from a plant called?

It stops the plant pouring energy into seed and often prompts a second flush of blooms.

In grafting, the upper part is the scion. What is the lower, rooted part called?

Almost every commercial apple tree is grafted, because apple seeds do not grow true to the parent.

What is the technique of training a fruit tree flat against a wall or frame called?

The word is French, and free-standing single-tier versions are called step-overs.

The Chinese art that parallels Japanese bonsai is called what?

Korea has bunjae and Vietnam has hòn non bộ; the loanword bonsai has become the English umbrella term for all of them.

Which of these shrubs is a classic choice for topiary?

Yew, bay, holly and privet are the other regulars, all dense and tolerant of hard clipping.

Kew Gardens in London, a World Heritage Site, was founded in which year?

Its herbarium holds more than 8.5 million preserved specimens, one of the largest in the world.

Which landscape designer perfected the French formal garden style at Versailles?

The gardens cover about 800 hectares and their fountains still use much of the hydraulic network built for Louis XIV.

About how many flower bulbs are planted each year at Keukenhof in the Netherlands?

The 32-hectare park in Lisse is best known for tulips but also grows hyacinths, daffodils, lilies and roses.

The village of Giverny in Normandy is famous for the garden of which painter?

The water-lily pond and Japanese bridge he built there became the subject of his last great series of paintings.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are unique among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World for what reason?

Legend says Nebuchadnezzar II built them for his wife Amytis, who missed the green hills of her homeland; some scholars now place them at Nineveh.

How did the 18th-century landscape gardener Lancelot Brown earn his famous nickname?

He designed more than 170 parks, including Blenheim, and many survive today.

Gertrude Jekyll is best remembered for her garden partnership with which architect?

She created more than 400 gardens and wrote over 1,000 magazine articles; Munstead Wood was their first collaboration.

Which famous white-petalled garden flower was among Luther Burbank's 800-plus plant varieties?

His other successes include the Santa Rosa plum, the plumcot and a spineless cactus for cattle feed.

Monty Don took over as lead presenter of BBC's Gardeners' World in 2003, replacing whom?

The change was made at his predecessor's suggestion, and Don has fronted the show from his own garden, Longmeadow.

In 1893 the US Supreme Court ruled that, for tariff purposes, the tomato was a what?

Botanically it is a berry, but the court in Nix v. Hedden went with the popular definition: served with dinner, not dessert.

The 'Three Sisters' planted by indigenous peoples of the Americas are maize, beans and what?

The corn supports the beans, the beans fix nitrogen and the squash leaves shade out weeds and hold moisture.

Tulip mania, the famous speculative bubble, collapsed in which year?

A single bulb of the Viceroy variety was offered for 3,000 to 4,200 guilders, when a skilled artisan earned about 300 a year.

Apples, pears, strawberries, cherries and almonds all belong to the same botanical group as which flower?

The Rosaceae also give us plums, peaches, raspberries, quinces and hawthorn.

It is often said that sunflowers follow the sun all day. What do mature sunflower heads actually do?

Only immature buds track the sun; the heads lock in place, mostly facing east, once the flowers open.

The dahlia is the national flower of which country?

The plants were known only to the Aztecs and their neighbours until the Spanish conquest; the tubers store inulin rather than starch.

Ladybirds are welcomed by gardeners because they eat what?

The 'lady' in the name refers to the Virgin Mary, and their bright colours warn birds that they taste bad.

The 'lady' in ladybird refers to whom?

In North America they are ladybugs, and entomologists prefer 'lady beetles' since they are not true bugs.

Which First Lady planted a victory garden on the White House lawn in 1943?

The wartime campaign pushed the number of British allotments to about 1.4 million by 1943.

The RHS's Great Spring Show is held each May in the grounds of which London institution?

The RHS's Great Spring Show began at Kensington in 1862 and moved to Chelsea in 1913.

The Royal Horticultural Society, founded in 1804, has its flagship garden where?

The society was suggested in 1800 by John Wedgwood, son of the potter Josiah, and now runs five gardens.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault sits on an island belonging to which country?

It opened in February 2008 and passed a million samples in 2018; the Norwegian government paid the whole construction cost.

The USDA plant hardiness zones are based on what measurement?

The system defines 13 zones, so a plant 'hardy to zone 10' can take a winter low of 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

The daffodil is the national flower of which country?

Its bulbs contain the alkaloid galantamine, now used as a drug for Alzheimer's disease.

Rhubarb stalks are safe to eat, but the leaves are poisonous because they contain high levels of what?

Botanically rhubarb is a stalk vegetable, though it is nearly always cooked as a dessert.

What does the French phrase behind the word dandelion mean?

It refers to the jagged leaves; the older English folk name 'piss-a-bed' refers to its diuretic effect.

The world's largest wisteria, covering over an acre and weighing about 250 tons, is in which state?

The Sierra Madre Wisteria was planted in 1894 and now sprawls across two private gardens.

The Venus flytrap is native to which part of the world?

Its jaws snap when tiny trigger hairs are touched, sometimes within a tenth of a second.

Vermicompost is compost produced with the help of what?

Red wigglers are the usual species, and the finished product is sometimes called worm manure.

Clover, vetch and other legumes are grown as green manure because bacteria in their root nodules do what?

Depending on the crop, digging it in can add between 40 and 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre.

New York's Central Park was designed in 1858 by Calvert Vaux and which landscape architect?

Their winning entry was called the Greensward Plan; the park covers 843 acres.

Who wrote the 1911 children's novel The Secret Garden?

It was serialised in The American Magazine before appearing as a book.

Vita Sackville-West created the garden at Sissinghurst in Kent with her husband, who was?

She also wrote a gardening column for The Observer from 1946 to 1961 and inspired Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

The Flower Dome at Singapore's Gardens by the Bay holds what record?

The 105-hectare park beside Marina Reservoir is also home to the solar-powered Supertree Grove.

Many gardeners say a variety must date from before which year to count as an heirloom?

That year marked the widespread arrival of the first hybrid seed varieties, though other definitions use 50 or 100 years.

'Guerrilla gardening' was first used in 1973 by Liz Christy and her Green Guerrilla group in which city?

The movement's trademark weapon is the seed ball, tossed onto neglected land to sprout wildflowers.

Loam, the ideal garden soil, is a mix of clay, silt and what?

The proportions matter: mostly sand and silt with a smaller amount of clay, giving drainage and nutrient-holding at once.

The Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in London in 1673 by which group to grow medicinal plants?

It is one of Britain's oldest botanic gardens, second only to Oxford's.

Gregor Mendel worked out the laws of inheritance by breeding which plant in his monastery's grounds?

Between 1856 and 1863 he tracked seven traits, including plant height, pod shape and flower colour.

The heart drug digoxin is extracted from which common garden flower?

The plant is a biennial that puts up its tall flower spike in its second year, and every part of it is toxic.

The sweet pea, prized for its scent, is native to which Mediterranean island?

The Franciscan monk Francesco Cupani first described it in 1696, and it is a legume that should not be eaten.

The lawn mower was invented in 1830 by Edwin Budding in which English county?

His 19-inch wrought-iron machine was meant for sports grounds and large gardens, as an alternative to the scythe.

In Beatrix Potter's tale, Peter Rabbit gets into trouble in whose garden?

The 1902 book was the first of six Peter Rabbit stories, and his father had famously ended up in a pie there.

The rhododendron is the national flower of which Himalayan country?

It is also the state flower of Washington and West Virginia in the US.

A cold frame protects young plants with what kind of roof?

It lets sunlight in by day and traps heat at night, and is used to harden off seedlings before planting out.

In horticulture, what does the branch called pomology study?

The name comes from the Latin pomum; vegetable growing is olericulture and flower growing is floriculture.

What is vernalization, the treatment that brings many biennials and winter cereals into flower?

Without a winter, or a spell in the fridge, plants such as winter wheat and many bulbs simply refuse to flower.

Which Soviet agronomist coined the term, in 1928, that was later translated as 'vernalization'?

His word was 'yarovizatsiya'; the real science had been laid out a decade earlier by the German physiologist Gustav Gassner.

Whose 1627 book Sylva Sylvarum contains the earliest published work on growing land plants without soil?

It appeared a year after his death; John Woodward followed in 1699 with water-culture experiments on spearmint.

In hydroponics, what does the abbreviation NFT stand for?

A shallow stream of nutrient solution is recirculated past bare roots in a channel, so the roots get water and air at once.

What is the term for the pale, spindly growth of a plant raised in little or no light?

The stems stretch toward any light source and stay pale because no chlorophyll is made, which is exactly how forced rhubarb and white asparagus are produced.

What do gardeners say lettuce has done when it sends up a flowering stem in hot weather?

Basil, beetroot, brassicas, celery, onions and leeks are prone to it too, and the leaves usually turn bitter once it happens.

Which Cornell botanist pioneered micropropagation and tissue culture in the late 1950s?

His carrot-cell experiments showed a single cell could regrow a whole plant, the basis of mass-produced orchids and disease-free potatoes.

Which propagation technique, also called marcotting, roots a branch while still attached to the parent plant?

The stem is girdled, wrapped in damp moss and plastic, and cut free once roots form; it is the standard way to multiply woody shrubs and trees such as figs and magnolias.

What does the 'F' in the seed-packet term 'F1 hybrid' stand for?

F1 plants are uniform and vigorous, but seed saved from them produces a wildly variable second generation, which suits seed companies nicely.

Rooting powders and gels used on cuttings are based on which class of plant hormone?

The usual active ingredient is indole-3-butyric acid, a synthetic cousin of the plant's own indole-3-acetic acid.

Yellowing leaves from too little chlorophyll, often an iron shortage on limy soils, is called what?

French vine growers call the limestone version 'chlorose calcaire'; magnesium and zinc shortages produce it too.

The world's oldest horticultural society, founded in 1768, is based in which English city?

The Ancient Society of York Florists still holds shows today, predating the Royal Horticultural Society by 36 years.

What is a plant's flowering response to day and night length, documented in 1920, called?

It is why poinsettias and chrysanthemums are given long nights under blackout cloth to flower for the holidays.