Gardening

Mulch is a layer of material that you put on the ground around plants. Mulch keeps the soil from drying out, and can help keep it from getting too hot or cold.

Mulches can be made from many things, but the most common kinds of mulch are decorative gravels, pebbles, bark, wood chips and leaves. Mulches made from bark or leaves will slowly break down and make the soil better.

"Plant" is a word that covers an enormous number of living things in the world. Plants can be divided up into several groups, namely algae (that green slime you find in ponds), bryophytes (non vascular plants, or mosses and lichens - the small, often fuzzy plants that you see growing on rocks or on the ground in damp corners) and tracheophytes.

Tracheophytes, or vascular plants, are the most familiar. They include all the trees, ferns, grass and flowers you see around your neighbourhood. The plant in the picture is a vascular plant, growing in a pot.

Pruning is a way of removing parts of a plant with a pruning saw or secateurs. Pruning can be done to improve the shape of a plant, to encourage new growth or to remove dead or diseased branches.

A rake is a set of metal or plastic teeth on the end of a long stick that is used for raking up large bits of trash on the ground. Rakes are most often used for raking fallen leaves into piles when they fall in autumn.

A rockery is a type of garden that has a lot of rocks in it as a feature. Rockeries are often built on a slope in a sunny area. Rockery plants are typically small, sun-loving drought tolerant plants like thyme and gazanias.

Secateurs, also called pruning shears, are a kind of scissor designed for cutting through the stems of plants. They have a different design to regular scissors to give them the extra strength needed to cut through wood.

Soil is the name for dirt that is good to grow plants in. Soil is usually high in organic matter, either naturally from silt or decaying leaves, or added by a gardener in the form of compost.

You sow seeds by planting them in the ground. The men in the picture are sowing lots of seeds to make a vegetable garden.

A sprinkler is something you attach to the end of a hose and use to water your garden with. Sprinklers cover a wider area more evenly than you could do by hand with a hose.

A stake is any piece of wood, or sometimes metal, that is used for supporting something else. Stakes are generally driven into the ground and are used to support plants or young trees as they grow.

Stakes usually have one end sharpened to a point, which makes it easier to drive them into the ground.