Mark McNee

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  • Hard Landscaping

    This tends to be used, principally in professional horticulture, to refer to the none plant parts of a garden. So landscaping an area would be divided into either hard or soft landscaping. Generally this doesn’t include the soil and compost but where there is a lot of earth moving that could be included in hard…

  • Soft Landscaping

    This loose term is more frequently seen used within professional horticulture but simply means the soft things that grow ( i.e. plants) and the soil or compost they grow in. So it includes trees, shrubs, hardy perennials, grass, etc.. It generally doesn’t include vegetables grown purely for consumption, there are a number of very ornamental…

  • Landscaping

    From the word landscape, originally landskip, which was an artist term referring to a country scene which was painted. Later the word was combined with gardening to give us landscape-gardening and this has been further contracted to landscaping. The term landscape-gardening only really can into use with the English Landskip movement of 18th century. It…

  • Nutcutts Book of Plants

    It may seem strange to include in this list what is to a large part a nursery catalogue, and it is unashamedly in a part an advertisement for Nutcutts. The thing is it is a treasure trove of information on garden plants presented in a concise and assessable style. Thought the content is about the…

  • Selective Weed killer

    Also called a selective herbicide. A weed killer that is more poisonous to some types of plants than others. Note that it selective weed killers are first weed killer, i.e. they kill all plants, and then the selective part is just how susceptible different plants are that particular chemical. Or to put it other way…

  • Herbicide

    The proper name for a weed killer. It’s formed from ‘herb’ meaning a plant (from the latin herba meaning a green plant) and ‘icide’ meaning it kills things. So you get insecticide, fungicide, biocide, pesticide, etc.

  • Tree

    A plant, larger than a shrub, with a one or occasionally 2 or more clear stems which form a trunk(s). Above the trunk is a system of branches which gradually increase over the years.

  • Weed

    A plant in the wrong place. That’s it really, any one plant can be or not be a weed depending where it’s growing, when it’s growing there and most of all who’s looking at it!

  • So how is a plant name constructed?

    A basic plant name consist of a genus which starts with a capital letter and a species which does not both of which should be written in italic or underlined. This is to make it clear you are looking at a proper plant name. Good as this simple system is, and if that was it…

  • Alchemilla Mollis

    Alchemilla Mollis

    This is a very common garden plant, known as Lady’s Mantle, grown in many gardens for its attractive foliage and ability to provide a weed covering mat. It is easily grown in sun or light shade, only limited by heavy shade, in any normal garden soil; seeding itself freely about he garden give any opportunity.…