The Gardening Portal
Gardening is the process of growing plants for their vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, and appearances within a designated space. Gardens fulfill a wide assortment of purposes, notably the production of aesthetically pleasing areas, medicines, cosmetics, dyes, foods, poisons, wildlife habitats, and saleable goods (see market gardening). People often partake in gardening for its therapeutic, health, educational, cultural, philosophical, environmental, and religious benefits. Gardening varies in scale from the 800 hectare Versailles gardens down to container gardens grown inside. Gardens take many forms, some only contain one type of plant while others involve a complex assortment of plants with no particular order. (Full article...)
Horticulture is the art and science of growing plants. This definition is seen in its etymology, which is derived from the Latin words hortus, which means "garden" and cultura which means "to cultivate". There are various divisions of horticulture because plants are grown for a variety of purposes. These divisions include, but are not limited to: gardening, plant production/propagation, arboriculture, landscaping, floriculture and turf maintenance. For each of these, there are various professions, aspects, tools used and associated challenges; Each requiring highly specialized skills and knowledge of the horticulturist. (Full article...)
General images -
Selected article -
![Image of ripe nutmeg fruit split open to show red aril](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Myris_fragr_Fr_080112-3294_ltn.jpg/300px-Myris_fragr_Fr_080112-3294_ltn.jpg)
Botany, also called plant science (or plant sciences), plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη (botanē) meaning "pasture", "herbs" "grass", or "fodder"; βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν (boskein), "to feed" or "to graze". Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants (including approximately 369,000 species of flowering plants), and approximately 20,000 are bryophytes.
Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – plants that were edible, poisonous, and possibly medicinal, making it one of the first endeavours of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to monasteries, contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit. They were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities, founded from the 1540s onwards. One of the earliest was the Padua botanical garden. These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, and led in 1753 to the binomial system of nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus that remains in use to this day for the naming of all biological species. (Full article...)Selected image
Related portals
Did you know -
- ... that the Berggarten, a historic botanical garden since 1750 in Herrenhausen, features a mausoleum, where members of the royal family were interred?
- ... that the uncommon Florida lichen species Gyalectidium yahriae was named after Rebecca Yahr of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in Scotland?
- ... that the firm of Israel Sack supplied American antiques to leading private collectors and museums, including the Winterthur Museum, The Henry Ford, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
- ... that a cactus is named after Gertrude Webster, who helped found the Desert Botanical Garden in Arizona?
- ... that popular garden plants like malfurada often escape from cultivation and become invasive?
- ... that actress Katharine Hepburn threatened to remove her name from a garden in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza when New York City officials said they would not widen the plaza?
- ... that the woodland garden, "colourfully planted with exotic shrubs and herbaceous plants, dominated English horticulture from 1910 to 1960"?
- ... that a "bat ensnared by a plant" was discovered in the garden of the Palestine Museum of Natural History?
Things you can do
- This list is transcluded from the tasks list page. To edit the list, click here
![]() |
Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
|
WikiProjects
Topics
Categories
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
Recent Comments