Gardening for Beginners

Do you have grey fingers? Can’t tell your aster from a hole in the ground? Reflecting the current attitude that gardening is the new rock and roll, this tells you all you need to know.

Gardening Term	What It Really Means
Agent Orange	The gardener’s friend. Except it doesn’t work on weeds only on flowers.
Annual	Plant equivalent of the disposable lighter. Chuck it away when it’s finished (ie as soon as you get it back from the garden centre.)
Cat	Domestic animal that is the only one known to be able to dig in a flowerbed without the use of heavy equipment.
Cat trap	See Ponds.
Compost	Evil smelling brown sludge in the bottom of the binbag full of grass cuttings you forgot to take to the tip and left in the garage over winter.
Failure to thrive	Common condition found in flowers  bought from the garden centre, but rare in weeds.
First cut	Early Spring ritual where the lawnmower is used to scarify the lawn.
Flower	Something you do want to grow in your garden, but it doesn’t. Also any plant that is attractive to slugs, vine weevils, greenfly. See Weed.
Flowerbed	Strip of barren earth resembling the dustbowl conditions in the American Midwest in the 1930s. Except there’s a lot more grass. Turns to mud after minimal rainfall.
Garden centre	Commercial concern where hapless gardeners are taken for every penny they have. All legal, surprisingly.
Gazebo	Strange quadruped born after a foggy night on the plains of Africa.
Grass	Any narrowleaf plant of the family Gramineae that will grow profusely in a flowerbed but not on a lawn
Greenfly	Whoever named them had clearly never seen how non-ecofriendly they are. Insect equivalent of Agent Orange.
Grey fingers	The opposite of green fingers. Uncanny ability to kill perfectly healthy flowers simply by being in the same postal district.
Grow bag	All the dead stuff you threw away last year, conveniently repackaged and sold back to you at nearly the cost of the original plants that died on you.
Hardy	Takes two weeks to die. See Tender.
Impatiens	Also known as a busy lizzie, ideal for shady wet areas, where it forms a dense low growing carpet of rotting vegetation.
Ivy	Creeping, fast growing, evergreen broadleaf plant your neighbour feels makes his house look rustic, but which is loosening your ridge tiles.
Lawn	I.      A area of smooth, baize-like grass used to break up flowerbeds.            II.      A wafer thin veneer of sickly turf, barely covering the builder’s rubble.          III.      Ant haven.
Lawn rake	Device for dragging dead leaves and most of the grass out of your lawn. Much like a low tech lawnmower.
Lawnmower	Device for digging long parallel grooves in your lawn. Also good for taking the tops off ants’ nests.
Perennial	Plant that dies back in the autumn and would grow again next year if you hadn’t forgotten it was there and dug it up by accident. See Annual.
Ponds	Haven for all manner of wildlife, all of which are predators for the 500 quid koi carp you bought last week. Also a haven for all sorts of wild plants, which will choke off your lilies. Also known as a cat trap.
Sand	Used to help break up soil in a flowerbed, making the life of the cat easier.
Slug pellets	Gourmet feast for slugs. They will come from miles away simply to gorge themselves before tackling your prized hostas for afters.
Slug traps	Sunken jars full of beer into which slugs fall and drown. Slugs, being the gourmets that they are, can be a bit picky about their booze, and prefer premium lager to the Tesco own label bitter most gardeners use. When full, the contents of a slug trap can be simply disposed of over your neighbour’s wall, though this is an unpleasant task.
Slugs	Molluscan equivalent of a mugger. Takes everything, then comes back next day to see if you have anything else of worth. Vile. Carry a pair of scissors at all times, and be ruthless. Salt’s good too, though it will poison what little decent soil you have. A blowtorch works, but may not be for the squeamish.
Tender	Dies in the car on the way home from the garden centre
Thinning out	Removal of healthy plants so that predators can get at the remaining sickly ones more easily.
Tilth	Fine, easily draining, fertile soil not found in Essex except up at the Big House.
Turf	Strips of grass that are a handy size to be rolled up for ease of removal when they die back.
Vine weevil	Insect larvae that attack the roots of flowers but not those of weeds. They operate an Equal Opportunities policy that allows them to eat anything except vines, eg the violas in my garden.
Weed	Something you don’t want to grow in your garden, but it does anyway. Distinguished from a flower by being impossible to uproot, and resistant to all known garden pests. And to all known weedkillers.
Weedkiller	Something that doesn’t kill weeds, but inflicts horrible damage on flowers with even the slightest spray drift.
Wilted greens	A cookery term that has been appropriated by gardeners the world over. Used to describe flowers after a prolonged period of drought.