Garden-speak can sound like a secret language, especially when you’re just getting started. This guide unpacks the oddest terms—like bolting, deadheading, and hardening off—with friendly, beginner-focused explanations.
The Empress of Dirt Gardener’s Dictionary is also a good resource for learning garden jargon.

Garden Jargon 101
It’s easy to forget how strange gardening lingo sounds when you’re just starting out. Words like bolting or heeling in can make gardening feel less like the deeply rewarding, life-enhancing activity it is and more like you’ve stumbled into a secret club that forgot to hand out a glossary of terms.

While some might call it a hobby, for many of us, gardening is much more than that: it’s a connection to the earth, a path to sustainability, a way to find calm, purpose, and joy. Practical, productive therapy, if you will.
And once it wins you over, you’re in it for life.
Those of us who’ve been gardening for a while may not even notice when we slip into full garden-speak, but it can unintentionally leave new gardeners feeling confused or hesitant to ask questions.
I really notice this each spring when the local plant nurseries are packed with enthusiastic beginners asking lots of questions. A few curt, jargony answers and they’re left feeling discouraged and overwhelmed.
Terms like annuals, perennials, chitting, damping off, or pinching back might be second nature to us, but they can fly right past newbies. And don’t get me started on all the misinformation shared about things like fertilizer and pest control.
If we want to grow a more inclusive gardening community—and we do!—we need to keep things clear (can I also wish for accurate?), welcoming, and friendly. And big bonus for everyone who has a sense of humor along the way. We want new gardeners to feel confident and curious, not lost. After all, every time a new person discovers the contentment found in the garden, the better the world is, don’t you think?
Here’s a guide to some of those odd-sounding terms, what they mean, and how they fit into everyday gardening. I’ve done my best to provide practical definitions.
See how many you already know.
- Annual vs. Perennial — Annuals live for one growing season; perennials come back year after year.
- Bolting — When plants (like lettuce) quickly flower and go to seed, usually because of heat.
- Chitting — Letting potatoes sprout in preparation for planting. Potatoes planted to grow more potatoes are called “seed potatoes.”
- Companion planting — Growing certain plants near each other for supposed benefits like pest control or better growth.
- Crown — The part of a plant where the roots and stems meet, just above or below the soil. Some plants like peonies like the crown at a specific soil depth.
- Cuttings — Pieces of plants (like a stem or leaf) that can grow roots and become a new plant.
- Damping off — A fungal problem that causes young seedlings to wilt and die suddenly.
- Days to maturity — How long it takes from planting a seed to harvesting a full-grown plant. The days may be estimated differently depending on whether the seed is typically started directly outdoors or started indoors and later transplanted outdoors.
- Deadheading — Removing old or faded flowers to encourage more blooms. The term is commonly confused with pruning.
- Flat — A shallow tray used for starting seeds or growing young plants. There’s a funny expression in the gardening world referring to someone who is not quite with it: He’s a few plants short of a flat.
- Green manure — Crops grown to be tilled into the soil to improve its health, not actual manure! You may also hear them called cover crops, green crops, fodder crops, or green mulch.
- Hardening off — Slowly getting indoor-grown plants used to outdoor conditions before planting them outside.
- Heeling in — Temporarily planting or burying container plants partially in the ground to protect their roots until you can plant them properly. This technique is typically used to overwinter potted plants, providing extra insulation for the roots.
- Loamy soil — Soil that’s just the right mix of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter for healthy plants. To many of us, loam is gardening’s version of a mythological creature.
- No-dig gardening — Growing plants with minimal disruption to the soil by digging or tilling.
- Organic — This word has many definitions and it can be used to mislead gardeners. This explains how.
- Overwintering — Keeping not entirely hardy plants alive through winter, either indoors or outdoors, using various methods including weather protection or insulation.
- Pinching back — Snipping off the tips of flower stems to encourage bushier, fuller growth.
- Succession planting — Planting new crops as soon as one is harvested to keep the garden producing. This shares a good succession planting plan for growing vegetables in containers.
- Suckers — Extra shoots that pop up from the base or stems of trees and shrubs or between the leaf stem and main stem in plants like tomatoes. I cut off tomato suckers and root them into new plants.
- Thinning — Removing some young plants or seedlings so the remaining ones have room to grow. You will also hear this called pricking out.
- Transplant shock — The stress plants go through after being moved to a new spot, sometimes causing wilting or slow growth.
- Volunteer plants — Plants that grow on their own, usually from seeds dropped by last year’s crops.
- Well-draining — Soil that neither becomes too dry or soggy after rain or watering.
So how many did you already know? Or did you learn a few?
There’s a lot more than I’ve listed here—and some are just common in certain regions—but it is fun to see how much we’ve learned along the way.
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