Test Your Vocabulary
Variety of Garden Words
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With prose that sells, and no misspells, and smart quotes all in a row.
So how's your green thumb today?
Test your knowledge of these garden vocabulary words. You'll find the answers at the bottom of the post. No cheating allowed!
1. beneficials: (a) the basic chemicals necessary for plant life, being nitrogen, phosphorous, and iron; (b) service plants that assist other plants in healthy growth; (c) organisms (as ladybugs, lacewings, and bacteria) that feed on or parasitize pests of crops, gardens, and turf; (d) British: the receipts of a well-tended vegetable garden.
2. bower: (a) a shelter (as in a garden) made with tree boughs or vines twined together; (b) a garden plant (Brassica oleracea botrytis) related to the mushroom that grows in a characteristic bent low shape; (c) a garden or park walk bordered by trees or bushes; (d) British: a frog.
3. knot garden: (a) a garden of hemp weeds; (b) an elaborately designed garden especially of flowers or herbs; (c) a garden specially planted in the rotted stump of a felled tree; (d) a garden in which thistles are allowed to thrive in order to crowd out other, more prolific weed forms.
4. marrowfat: (a) a fungal disease attacking primarily tomatoes; (b) the liquid produced from the squeezing of petunia leaves, valued for its medicinal qualities; (c) any of several wrinkled-seeded garden peas; (d) capitalized: the gardener in Dickens' Great Expectations.
5. parterre: (a) a scoop-shaped or flat-bladed garden tool for taking up and setting small plants; (b) a maze (as in a garden) formed by paths separated by high hedges; (c) an ornamental garden with paths between the beds; (d) a trench in the earth made by a plow.
6. rockery: (a) a garden swing; (b) a quarry; (c) a breeding ground or haunt especially of gregarious birds or mammals (as penguins or seals); (d) British: a rock garden.
7. Gethsemane: (a) the garden outside Jerusalem mentioned in Mark 14 as the scene of the agony and arrest of Jesus; (b) the Roman god of gardening; (c) a legendary garden at the western extremity of the world producing golden apples; (d) the garden where according to the account in Genesis Adam and Eve first lived.
8. boll: (a) to take unawares; (b) the pod or capsule of a plant (as cotton); (c) the first leaf of a potato plant forming a protective sheath about the plumule; (d) a usually glazed printed cotton fabric.
9. determinate: (a) detrimental; (b) characterized by growth in which the fruit show significant resistance to disease; (c) an old variety which has been maintained either because it has appealing attributes like extra large size, unusual coloring, special connoisseur qualities, or because of family sentimental reasons; (d) characterized by growth in which the main stem ends in an inflorescence and stops growing with only branches from the main stem having further and similarly restricted growth.
10. refugium: (a) the state of denial with regard to global warming; (b) an area of relatively unaltered climate that is inhabited by plants and animals during a period of continental climatic change (as a glaciation) and remains as a center of relict forms from which a new dispersion and speciation may take place after climatic readjustment; (c) the garden area of a monastery or nunnery; (d) a planting or growth of shrubs for the purpose of blocking access to something, as a patio edge or a rooftop garden edge.
Answers: 1:c 2:a 3:b 4:c 5:c 6:d 7:a 8:b 9:d 10:b
Rate Yourself:
- 1 to 2 correct: Can't even grow a ch-ch-ch-chia pet.
- 3 to 5 correct: Petunias...maybe.
- 6 to 7 correct: You can probably manage two varieties of tomatoes.
- 8 to 9 correct: Moving up to roses.
- All 10 correct: Neighbors voted your lawn the lawn of the week again.