Have you ever given any thought to the fact that every profession has its own language? Probably not. At least not until you were trying to pay attention to a conversation and every other word or term was one that you weren't familiar with. You tried and tried to understand what was being said, but try as you may, the other party seemed to be speaking some foreign language. Even the words that you thought were common and you thought you knew the meaning to, obviously meant something different to the one using the words. Doctors and lawyers are good examples of this. You go to a doctor for something seemingly simple and after sitting and listening to your doctor explain what was going on, you are left feeling as if you were at deaths door and more confused than you were when you went in. Even if you weren't confused when you went in, you were when you left.

Gardening and the outdoors can be much the same to the uninitiated. At times, it's difficult even for those who have been at it a while. Long-time gardeners tend to have their own garden words and garden terminology at times. Gardening terminology however, tends to be more fluid and ambiguous than many unless you are getting into one of the higher disciplines such as plant breeding or one of the other sciences. Then you get into plant terminology that can be quite difficult at times.

Plant terminology can be difficult on several levels because it is generally much more finite than the frugal gardener every day garden slang of everyday use. This and coupled with the fact that most plant terminology, at least when it comes to plant names, is based largely on Latin which is a very precise language. Latin is a common language for many professions because of its tendency toward more precise meanings. When it comes to garden definitions and garden terminology dealing with plants and plant parts, the Hillbilly Gardener can't urge and encourage enough, the frugal gardener and beginner alike to take the time to at least become familiar with the Latin or "Botanical" names of plants. This is the only way that all gardeners in all parts of the world can know what plant you are talking about. A plant known by one common names to you can have dozens of common names, depending on where you live and come from. On this note, the Hillbilly Gardener believes that the responsible thing to do is to stress, stress, stress the following:

"If you are interested in or use herbs in any medicinal manner or form, NEVER take or use any herb, plant or plant part for medicinal purposes unless you can accurately and absolutely properly identify it"

It is, or at least can be, unfortunate to the frugal gardener that garden definitions and garden terminology for much of what is fairly common today is still often quite ambiguous and vague. Even the most well schooled professionals in the fields of horticulture and the outdoors cannot or will not always agree on many definitions and terms. So, where does this leave the average frugal gardener wrestling with garden words and gardening terminology?

The Hillbilly Gardener has wrestled with many of these himself over the years here in the Garden of Weedin. For this reason, the Hillbilly Gardener has chosen to tackle many of the most common garden words and garden terminology and try to help the frugal gardener make sense of it all. The Hillbilly Gardener has amassed quite a collection of such garden definitions and gardening terminology over the years, based on the most common or most widely accepted use of the term. For now, the Hillbilly Gardener is placing them here for you and will be adding many more over the next few weeks or months for you. It is the hope of the Hillbilly Gardener that this will help end some of the confusion for his readers and for the new gardener. To your continuing gardening success, the Hillbilly Gardener wishes you the most bountiful harvests. Feel free to contact the Hillbilly Gardener with any garden terminology you would like further clarification on. It would tickle him to no end to help you.

the "Hillbilly Gardener"

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Shade Definitions

THERE ARE AS many different interpretations of shade types as there are books written about shade. For the sake of consistency, we are using shade definitions from the American Horticultural Society in its book Gardening in Shade (DK Publishing, 1999).

LIGHT

Light shade is a permanent shade cast by the shadow of a building, wall, hedge, or tree on a site otherwise exposed to the sky and open to light. It offers the most opportunity for blooming plants that otherwise like the sun.

PARTIAL

After light shade, partial shade provides the next best opportunity for flowers in shade. Under these conditions, an area receives up to six hours of direct sun, with four or more of those hours being in the morning, and the rest of the day being in shadow. It is the most beneficial for a variety of plants. (Note that if four or more of the six hours of sun are in the afternoon, it is considered to be full sun.)

DAPPLED OR FILTERED

Dappled, or filtered, shade is created by sunlight filtering through the canopy of open tree branches or through latticework structures, with the pattern of light shifting all day. This is probably the most common shade in suburban backyards and is also the most common woodland shade-garden environment.

DEEP OR FULL

Deep, or full, shade is the dense kind of shade found under evergreens or closely spaced shrubs and trees that do not allow any direct light to penetrate. This is the most cooling kind of shade but is also the most difficult; it takes effort to find plants that will bloom here. But it also can be the most interesting, because the plants suited to it tend to have the best leaf structure.

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Double-Digging

Double-digging is where the soil from a given area (normally only two to four feet wide by ten to twenty feet long) is removed in a row approximately one foot wide and a foot deep to form a trench. This soil is moved to the end of the area. Then the soil in the bottom of the trench just made is loosened and organic matter is mixed in. A row of soil approximately one foot wide next to that trench is removed and placed in the trench previously made. Organic matter is then mixed with this soil. The subsoil in the second trench is then loosened and organic matter is mixed in. This process is repeated until the end of the planting area is reached. At that point, the topsoil removed from the first trench is placed into the last trench and organic matter is mixed in. This practice results in a deep growing bed that is raised.

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the "Hillbilly Gardener"