List of gardening terms

You mow grass by cutting it down close to the ground. Most people mow their lawns with a lawnmower, but other grass crops such as wheat are also mown at harvest time.

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.

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.

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.

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