Garden Terms Decoded

by Kathleen Curthoys, Fairfax Master Gardener
gardening dictionaryGardeners have a language all their own. Our garden terms can be scientific or fanciful, exacting or quaint, often historic and sometimes mysterious.

Here’s a look at how a few curiosities came to be in our vocabulary. What does it mean to have dicots and deadheading in our abundant heritage? What do they tell us about their long-buried secrets and their sunlit appearance today?

Let’s dig into what the records reveal, through science and stories, about these garden terms. These descriptions come from scientific sources and common references but may not be the sole explanations for linguistic origins. They, like an overgrown garden, can have many tangled roots and shoots.

Arborvitae: You see these evergreens everywhere. The meaning of the name seems fitting for the ubiquitous American arborvitae . Arborvitae comes from Latin and means “tree of life.” Its medicinal properties include warding off scurvy with a tea made from its foliage, as indigenous people of North America showed settlers. The wood is also used to craft canoes. Deer like it too, but fortunately modern-day gardeners can find at least one variety, ‘Green Giant,’ said to be more deer-resistant than others.

Bee balm: The story of Monarda didyma reveals more than just a native herbaceous perennial popular for attracting pollinators to the garden. It also has a history as an herbal treatment, with its resins used as a balm to soothe bee stings.

Bolt: To bolt typically means to move suddenly and even unexpectedly. That can apply to plants. Bolting is when vegetable crops prematurely show runaway growth and go to seed. The plant may become tasteless, woody and tough. You may be able to save the plant and keep it productive if you trim back flowers and seeds early enough.

Boxwood: The shrub Buxus, from the family Buxaceae, is renowned for its dense fine-grain wood that resists chipping and splitting. In many countries through history, the wood has been used for a variety of products including cabinet making, straight-edge tools such as rulers, marquetry, musical instruments, woodblocks for printing and decorative boxes.

Corn: Word origins can have gnarled roots, particularly true for “corn.” The word comes from the Proto-Germanic kurnam, which means small seed or kernel. In Europe, it has referred generically to many different edible grains such as wheat and barley. When explorers came to the New World, it would have been understandable for them to refer to corn. The Native Americans used the term maize, a name the Spanish began to use. The crop that the settlers learned to grow was not the same as corn known today. Modern types of sweet corn were introduced later, beginning in the mid-1800s.

Deadheading: This is the practice of removing flowers or flower heads as they begin to fade and wither to prolong a plant’s blooming season and to generally tidy things up.

Dibber: From British English, a dibber is a tool with a point on one end used to pierce a hole in the soil for planting seeds, bulbs, etc., when a spade or shovel may be unwieldy. The verb “dibble,” to make a hole in the soil, occurs in the 16th century and may come from the Middle English verb “dibben,” to dip. The terms were more common in the 19th century than they are today.

Dicot/Dicotyledon: This is the class of flowering plant with two seedling leaves, or cotyledons, at germination. Dicots, sometimes referred to as broadleaf plants, include tomatoes, beans, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, green beans and many broadleaf weeds, as well as trees.

Dogwood: Why does the common name for Virginia’s state tree seem odd? One common theory is that the flowering dogwood’s name comes from the Old English word “dagwood,” and its hard wood was used to make daggers. Cornus, the Latin name for the dogwood, is said to come from cornu, or horn, to refer to the hard wood of this tree.

Ephemerals: From the Greek ephēmeros, meaning “for a day,” the term often appears in the context of “spring ephemerals,” flowers that bloom for a few days or weeks. They get their sun in before the trees come into leaf. A few of these signs of spring in our area are Virginia spring-beauty (Claytonia virginica) pale with pink stripes; Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria); cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata); the distinctively triune trillium and Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica).

Espalier: Pronounced “es-PAL-yay,” the term refers to the practice of growing a plant on a flat plane such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also refers to the plant itself. The French word comes from the Italian spalliera, meaning “something to rest the shoulder (spalla) against.” Growing plants such as fruit trees can save space in small gardens and increase productivity. Against a south-facing wall, the plant enjoys a warmer microclimate than if placed in a less sheltered spot. Espaliers are used as decorative accents against walls and as screens for less appealing areas of the garden. While the practice is often associated with walled garden in Britain and Europe, it was recorded in early Egypt and believed to have been used in ancient Rome.

Geraniums: The flowering plant commonly called “geranium,” often grown as a vividly colored annual in northern Virginia, is actually named Pelargonium, the name of its genus. And the genus named Geranium consists largely of plants with simpler, saucer-shaped flowers, often in more subdued colors. This group includes the native wild geranium. Some of the varieties are herbaceous perennials. The genus name Geranium comes from “geranos,” the Greek word for “crane.” Both geraniums and pelargoniums are in the family Geraniaceae.

Ha-ha: A curious term that comes to us from France and Britain, ha-ha refers to a landscape feature that acts as a wall or boundary marker set into a slope or ditch so that viewers from a distance don’t notice the change in elevation across a vista or landscape. One theory about the origin of the term is that visitors to a garden wouldn’t notice the sudden drop in terrain until they came upon it, and surprised, might cry out “Ah! Ah!” So wrote France’s Dezallier d’Argenville in “The Theory and Practice of Gardening” in the early 18th century, translated by Britain’s John James. In northern Virginia, ha-has have graced the grounds of Mount Vernon, River Farm and Dumbarton Oaks, to name a few.

More garden terms will be featured in the December update of this website.