A
ad hoc
[Latin; for this] for the particular end or case at hand without consideration of wider application.
allée
a general term for a walk bordered by trees or clipped hedges in a garden or park. In the French formal garden, the allées constitute the framework and are its most important features. They run between palissades, hedges or lawns, and are proportioned to their lengths and to the features they emcompass or lead to. It is not a narrow path; nor, although it may be quite wide, is it the same as an avenue.
alpine
by botanical definition, a plant found in pastures between the tree line and snow line of mountainous districts. Often generally applied to plants suitable for growing in rock gardens.
annual
a plant that germinates from seed, grows, flowers, sets seed and dies within a year or less.
arboretum (arboreta, pl.)
a collection of trees including exotic, unusual or scientifically interesting specimens.
arcade
literally, a series of arches; in gardening, often a straight, tree-lined walkway, the trees forming the arched ceiling.
Arcadia
a picturesque plateau region in Greece, reputed to be the home of pastoral poetry and commemorated by pastoral poets as an ideal landscape of peace and contentment, peopled by philosopher-shepherds.
architrave
a term generally used for the molding around a door or window, and specifically used for the lowest level of the entablature, directly above the capital of a column.
Arts & Crafts
a group of artists and craftsmen with an emphasis on utilitarianism, including John Ruskin and William Morris (socialists) who influenced English garden designers such as Gertrude Jekyll and who gardens are characterized by the use of local building materials and traditional plants along with the rejection of the regimented artificiality of much Victorian planting.
asymmetry
the opposite of symmetrical; a balanced and orderly arrangement of objects and/or space but not a mirror image arrangement.
B
baluster
one of a series of short vertical posts that support a rail and form a balustrade, often forming the roofline of a building as well as the border of a staircase or porch.
baroque
artistic style of the seventeenth century characterized in sculpture by passion, in architecture by grandeur and the use of curved structures, and in painting by voluptuous figures, huge landscapes, and dramatic subjects.
bee-boles
niches or alcoves set into walls, to house small straw beehives. These date from Tudor times.
belvedere
an ornamental building in some commanding position from which a view may be admired.
biennial
a plant that completes its life-cycle over two years. In the first year it produces leafy growth; in the second it flowers and then dies.
borrowed landscape
(Japanese=shakkei; Chinese=jei jing) is to incorporate into the garden setting and its design distinctive and appealing distant views, natural landscapes that are real and have not been created merely for the effect.
bract
a modified leaf at the base of the flower stalk or flower cluster. In some plants it appears to form part of the flower itself.
C
capital
carved or molded decorative head to a column or pilaster, denoting one of the five architectural orders.
capriccio
a type of landscape painting that reflects the whim or caprice of the painter in placing particular works of architecture in an unusual setting, such as the Roman Colosseum in a pastoral landscape or St. Paul's Cathedral on the Grand Canal in Venice.
cascade
a fall of water arranged in a succession of stages, either informally over a rock formation or more formally over a series of steps; a rustic arch often projects above the cascade, especially if the water emerges from a hillside.
champain
an expanse of open, level countryside.
champêtre
term in painting for the pastoral style in which nature seems left untouched by art.
chahar bagh
the symbolic design that two intersecting lines creates. It is the pattern referred to in the Bible in the book of Genesis (Gen 2:8-14) which describes the original garden.
cloche
a cover used to protect young plants, or in propagation. Early cloches were bell-shaped.
cloister
central part of a monastery opening to the courtyard.
clump
a cluster, usually of trees, planted for visual effect in a landscape garden in the picturesque style.
coffer
one of a series of recessed panels in a ceiling, usually done in plaster.
colonnade
a series of columns set at regular intervals, usually supporting the base of a roof structure.
column
a cylindrical, upright structural support in architecture, consisting of a base, shaft, and capital; an engaged column is one half-embedded in the wall behind it.
coppice
a medieval technique in which trees or bushes are regularly cut back to low stumps (STOOLS) to promote the growth of many straight stems useful in the garden as pea sticks and supports. Chestnut and hazel are traditional trees for coppicing.
cordon
generally appliced to fruit trees that are trained by removing all the lateral branchs to leave a single main stem grwoing upright, horizontally, or more often at an oblique angle.
cornice
the uppermost level of the entablature; also the uppermost level of molding on an internal or external wall.
cultivar
correctly: CULTIvated VARiety. A horticulturally selected plant.
D
dentil
simple, projecting, tooth-like molding, representing the ends of roofing or ceiling beams, found on the cornices of buildings.
down
an undulating, treeless upland plain.
E
entablature
the uppermost part of a classical architectural order, a level of decoration situated above the capitals of a colonnade and consisting of the architrave, frieze, and cornice.
ericaceous
any plant in the family Ericadeae, including heathers, azaleas and rhododendrons.
espalier
a series of fruit trees trained on a framework of lines and stakes to form a hedge.
exedra
an open or colonnaded recess, intended for conversation, often semi-circular, and furnished with seats or a long bench.
eyecatcher
a structure, often an artificial ruin, built on a distant rise to catch the attention of a viewer and carry his or her eye out of the surrounding garden into the wider countryside.
F
facade
any front of a building given architectural treatment.
fastigiate
describes trees and shrubs with branches erect and close together rather than spreading. For example: Lombardy poplar.
ferme orneé
the ornamental farm, a rural retreat, cultivated for utility and for pleasure; withdrawal to the countryside, to a life of rustic simplicity and virtue away from the distractions and vices of town, refined by the cultivation of a garden; a small estate, part farm, part villa.
fête galante
a type of landscape painting made popular by Watteau that depicts outdoor gatherings (fêtes) of men and women, dressed in fashionable contemporary clothes and engaging in dance, flirtation, conversation, or music-making; the setting may involve architectural ruins.
Flora's Garden
a natural spot, not made but discovered, a clearing in the forest, a valley opening up between barren mountain-sides, an island in a remote lake, a grassy space rich with flowers; no one tends this garden, it grows of its own accord; spots favored by the gods.
flutes
rounded vertical grooves on a column or pilaster.
folly
a garden building built primarily for visual effect: to "fool" the eye.
forcing
the practice of hurrying plants into flower or to produce fruit early by means of artificial conditions.
frieze
the central level of the entablature, often decorated with classical motifs in carving or molding.
front
the architectural facing of a building, more decorative than structural.
G
gazebo
a building, pavilion or similar structure, often two stories high. Used as a focal point in a garden or as a shelter from wich to view the garden.
glade
open, grassy area surrounded by woods.
glaucous
dull greyish-green or blue, referring to leaves or stems; covered with a powdery bloom.
gothic
general term for a style of architecture and ornament prevalent between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, considered old-fashioned in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, characterized by pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, and flying buttresses, and by grotesque decorations; when it came back into fashion in the mid-1700s, it was celebrated as a symbol of British patriotism.
grafting
the practice of binding parts of two different plants together. Sucessful grafts unite and become a single plant.
grand style
the style of painting, promoted by Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy, in which the figures and background are painted in highly formal and idealized ways; such paintings demonstrate the artist's elevated thought and dignified composition.
Grand Tour
educated people (not necessarily the aristocracy) made the Grand Tour to Italy and other countries in the 1700s, broadening their knowledge and experiences.
grotto
an underground passage, often decorated with crystals, bits of broken shells, and broken pieces of mirror, and involving running water in rills and pools; all of this is calculated to create a mysterious effect.
H
ha-ha
a sunk fence; that is, a ditch with one sloping side and one vertical side into which is built a retaining wall; a ha-ha creates a barrier for sheep, cattle, and deer while allowing an unbroken view of the landscape. Thought to be first used in Great Britain by Charles Bridgeman who placed one in the landscape in the late 1690s at Levens Hall, Cumbria.
herbaceous
a plant that does not form a persistent woody stem as shrubs do. A term usually applied to perennials.
herm
a garden ornament consisting of a three-quarter length figure on a tall pedestal.
hermitage
a garden building, often complete with a hired "hermit" to live there, calculated to raise an appreciation for contemplation in the context of nature.
heroic painting
painting in the grand style, depicting scenes from history, mythology, or scripture, and promoting the heroic qualities of courage, loyalty, justice, generosity, etc.
hortus conclusus
a medieval form of enclosed garden, secular or ecclesiastical, that contained a fountain, rose parterres, arbors and turf seats along the walls.
hybrid
a plant resulting from a cross between two different species.
I
icehouse
a man-made underground cavern used for the storage of ice. Dates from the 17C. Usually sited some distance from the house and often close to a lake from which the ice was taken. Generally mounded over with earth.
J
K
knot
a small, rectangular garden, developed in Tudor times, that consists of an intricate, geometric pattern, or knot, laid out in dwarf plants such as box or rosemary; sometimes the pattern takes the form of objects such as heraldic beasts.
L
loggia
a gallery or arcade that is roofed but open, along the front or side of a building, and often on an upper level.
M
maze
or labryrinth, "house of Daedalus" and "the Walls of Troy" goes back many centuries BC, as an architectural idea to express the elaborate, tortuous windings of palaces, prisons and catacombs. The Church took over the idea of the labyrinth as representing the tortuous path the believer must follow to reach his spiritual goal, and the Cretan labyrinth pattern was depicted in many churches, painted, carved or executed in tile or mosaics. The hedge maze, formed most often from clipped yew, box or privet was one of several forms of outdoor maze which appeared in gardens in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. There are also turf mazes.
mount
an artificial mound or bank of earth, used as a vantage point from which to view the garden, or see over defensive walls into the surrounding countryside. A feature of many medieval and Tudor gardens.
mulch
generally a bulky organic material, such as bark chippings or peat, spread on the soil surface to aid water retention and to stop weeds growing.
N
neoclassicism
artistic style of the late eighteenth century, characterized by its regularity and uniformity and its close resemblance to the art of classical antiquity.
O
obelisk
a tall, thin, tapering structure or monument. Popular as focal points in 18C landscape gardens; an upright, four-sided, tapered pillar that terminates in a pyramid; it may be inscribed or plain, and it is often placed prominently in the center of a pool, at the crown of a hill, or at the end of a terrace walk.
orangery
a building, usually with large and numerous windows, built to house potted orange trees during the winter; the trees are moved outside during the warmer months.
order
one of the five classical architectural formulas consisting of base, column and entablature: seen most easily in the capital of a column, the orders range from the plainest (Tuscan and Doric) to the scrolled Ionic, the leafy Corinthian and the most elaborate Composite, a combination of the Ionic and Corinthian.
ornament
architectural or painterly decoration, as opposed to structural elements: urns, statuary, and friezes might ornament a building, while dress and jewelry might ornament a figure in a portrait.
P
pagoda
a Chinese building, usually tall and slender, surmounted by a peaked roof and often with more roofs at each storey.
panicle
branched cluster of individually stalked flowers.
paradise garden
paradise comes from the old Persian word pairidaeza, meaning an enclosure and was applied to the enclosed hunting park of the Persian King. The word was taken into Old Testament Hebrew, as pardes, to mean simply a garden or park enclosure and into Greek as paradeisos, where, meaning a kingly or sumptuous and extravagant park, it came to influence the later Hebrew sense, extended to cover both the original garden of Eden and the heavenly kingdom, the dwelling place of the saints, the 'celestial paradise'.
parterre
a level lawn usually adorned with geometrically shaped flower beds.
pastoral
a type of poetry or painting, on a lower level of formality and subject matter than the heroic, which has to do with the life of shepherds and shepherdesses, particularly during the golden age of classical times.
patte d'oie
three radiating garden avenues; named after a goose's foot.
pediment
the architectural structure above a window, door, or porch--either triangular or segmental (an arc, or segment of a circle); an open pediment has the center of its top missing, and a broken pediment has the center of its base missing.
perennial
a plant that lives for more than two years, dying down in autumn and reappearing the following spring.
pergola
a walk covered by pillars and cross members which support plants.
peristyle
literally, surrounded by columns; a term for a temple or other structure enclosed in a colonnade.
picturesque
an artistic principle in both painting and gardening that emphasizes the rough and irregular, the surprising, the various, the commonplace, and the decaying or aged; picturesque gardening and painting were mutually influential.
pilaster
a rectangular column, including its base and capital, set into the face of a wall.
pinetum
a collection of coniferous trees, including exotic, unusual or scientifically interesting specimens.
pleaching
the practice of forming a dense hedge by interweaving the branches of well-spaced trees but leaving the trunks prominent. Generally applied to limes and hornbeams.
plunge
the practice of sinking pots or other plant-holding containers up to the rim in soil, so as to hide the pots from view and protect the plants from fluctuating temperatures, or from drying out. The sites are called plunge beds.
pollard
a tree regularly cut back to the main trunk at a height of 5 to 6 feet, just above the browsing height of cattle and deer. After being pollarded many times it forms a thick trunk with a knot-like top.
portico
literally, porch: an architectural design used widely by Palladio and his followers, which consists of a colonnade supporting a pedimented roof of varying depth.
potager (pot-ah-zhay; French)
kitchen garden usually taken to mean a formal, decorative kitchen garden.
Priapus
in Greek mythology only Priapus seems to have had definite responsibility for gardens. The son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love (whose flower is the rose and whose fruit is the apple), and Dionysus, Priapus is a god of fertility and of the garden. Images of him show him to be ugly, small in stature, but with enormous genitals and carrying a sickle or a pruning knife. By Roman times, he seems to have become a scarecrow to frighten away thieves, birds and naughty boys.
procumbent/prostrate
plants with a spreading habit, growing horizontally, close to, or on the ground.
Q
quoin ('coin')
one of a series of stones laid at the exterior corners and angles of a building and consisting of contrasting material to that of the wall.
R
raceme
an unbranched, elongated flowerhead, comprising short-stalked flowers, spirally arranged.
rocaille
elaborate decoration made up of rock-like forms, shells and scrolls. From the word 'rococo'.
rococo
artistic style of the early eighteenth century characterized by energy, lightness, delicacy, playfulness, and self-conscious artificiality; it was replaced by a more stern neoclassicism.
rotunda
a circular, domed building or hall.
rustication
the roughened finish, naturally or artificially created, on blocks of stone or masonry, and the deep engraving of the joints between the blocks; rustication is often used on the facade of the ground floor of a Palladian building.
S
sacred grove
a place apart, consecrated to a spirit or divinity, or to the memory of a hero; with trees, rocks and water, surrounding a shrine or an altar, in a temple or within a grotto or cave. This religious or spiritual quality separates, though not sharply, the 'sacred grove' from the gardens of Flora.
St. Fiacre
was a prince in the 7thC from Scotland or Ireland who went to convert the Franks to Christianity. Living in a small gardne-enclosure in a forest near Meaux, his sanctity wa such that no wild animals would enter his garden, and so the legend grew up that his garden was miraculously enclosed.
species
a group of plants bearing the same unique characteristics, breeding true from seed.
spit
in reference to digging, it describes the soil taken out of the earth to one spade or fork's depth.
sport
a plant differing from its parant stock as the result of a spontaneous change (mutation) in the material composing one or more of its hereditary units or genes. Azaleas sport quite frequently.
standard
a tree or shrub with an upright stem that bears no branches for an appreciable distance, usually about 6 ft. In peas and other leguminous flowers the standard is the upright reat petal; in irises it is the three upright petals.
stew ponds
ponds stocked with fish for the table. A feature of medieval gardens, especially monastic.
T
temple
garden architecture, ornamental or functional, designed along classical lines. Popular in 18C landscape gardens.
term
first used in Roman times and named for the god Terminus, these statues served as landmarks, protecting boundaries, whether of a state, or rural properties. As garden ornaments, they line a walk or close a vista, surviving to modern times, often becoming confused with statues representing other persons (Faunas, for example, or Priapus).
tetrastyle
an architectural unit consisting of four columns.
theatre
tiers or terraces in a hillside, resembling the concave formation of seats in a classical outdoor theatre.
tonsure
the shaping of evergreens by clipping.
topiary
a garden or shrubbery trimmed and shaped into geometric or animal forms.
topographical painting
a type of landscape painting that tends toward factual representation, particularly in views of royal and aristocratic residences and of prominent features of a particular countryside; this type of landscape stands in contrast to the more mythological, imaginary representations of nature in the landscapes of, for example, Claude Lorrain.
trompe l'oeil (French)
literally to “deceive the eye”. A painting or garden ornament made to appear to be something which it is not.
tufa
a porous type of stone, which can retain water and support plant growth .
U
V
Venetian window
also called a Palladian window or a serliana, this decorative window is characterized by a central arched opening, wider and taller than its flanking openings, which have flat entablatures; these openings are usually flanked by decorative columns, and the center opening may sit above hinged panels which, when opened, create a Venetian door.
vista
a long view into the countryside.
W
wardian case
a glass case resembling a miniature greenhouse invented by Dr. Nathaniel B. Ward (1791-1868) for protecting plants in such unhealthy environments as the salt-sprayed decks of East India ships. Its invention was of extreme importance to plant collecting as the lengthy transportation of newly discovered plants had been, until that time, the chief cause of failure.
wilderness
in the I7C, a dense planting of trees and shrubs, crossed through by a network of intersecting paths. Now, any part of a garden that is uncultivated and left to nature.
witch's broom
an abnormal cluster of shoots on a tree branch, usually caused by a fungus but sometimes the results of an hereditary change (mutation). Witch's brooms are the source of many varieties of dwarf conifer.
X
Y
Z
