Harshita Joshi - Growing a Home Garden

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A garden, as per Oxford dictionary, is a piece of ground used for growing flowers and vegetables, and gardening is the activity of growing flowers and vegetables on a piece of ground. However in broad term, a garden may be defined as a piece of land that is used for beautification and utility purposes. A garden may be beautified by landscaping and by planting flowering and foliage plants. It is made useful by planting vegetables, medicinal and culinary herbs, and fruit trees.

Gardening may be pursued either as a hobby or as a career. To the modern urban world, gardening is a hobby, a relaxing escape from the pressures of an urban environment. To a vocational gardener, gardening may be an enjoyable vocation. Whatever may be the reason behind the gardening activity, undoubtedly, growing flowers, fresh vegetables, herbs, and fruits, provides a great sense of joy, relaxation and accomplishment.

In horticulture, gardening is defined as the practice of growing and cultivating plants. In gardens, ornamental plants are often grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance, while other useful plants such as root vegetables, leafy vegetables, fruit plants, and herbs are grown for consumption purposes. There are certain other plants that are grown for use as dyes, or for their medicinal or cosmetic properties.

Gardening may be specialized or generic. Specialized gardens focus on growing a specific category of plants. For example, flower gardens, vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, herbal gardens, rock gardens, and so on. Generic gardens make use of both utility and aesthetics as in case of landscape gardens, parks, etc. An overview of different types of gardening practices is given below.

The scope of this book is limited to providing information on home gardening only.

As mentioned above, a home garden is always raised in a residential area. A home garden may be raised in the close vicinity of a villa or a residential house, or in the indoors of an apartment. That is, home gardening may be practiced as either an outdoor gardening activity or indoor gardening or both.

For a home gardener, outdoor gardening gives immense scope for a lot experimentations with different types of plants according to the outdoor area available for gardening. If large areas are available, then the gardener may raise different types of fruit trees, ornamental trees and a number of useful shrubs alongside small fruit plants, vegetables, herbs, and flowering plants. In an outdoor garden more emphasis in given on utility than aesthetics.

When gardening is pursued indoors, it is called indoor gardening. In indoor gardening, aesthetics is more emphasised than utility. That is, an indoor garden has great interior decoration value. For city dwellers that happen to live in multi-storeyed apartments, indoor gardening is not only a hobby but a way to ensure pollution-free indoors also.

DIY: When water-loving plants such as lotuses and water lilies are grown in ponds and pools of your outdoor gardens, it is called water gardening. The best example of a water garden is a bog garden

Based on life cycle, garden plants are grouped into THREE categories: annuals, biennials and perennials

These are a group of plants that complete their life cycles within a season or within a year. Based on the season of their growing, annuals are further categorised into THREE groups such as

1. Summer season annuals: These are the plants that complete their life cycle during summer season. Best examples are gourds and melons, and zinnias and dahlias
2. Rainy season annuals: These are the plants that complete their life cycle during rainy season. Best examples are amaranths and balsams
3. Winter season annuals: These are the plants that complete their life cycle during winter season. Best examples are pansy, nasturtium, sweet pea, hollyhock, begonias etc

These are a group of plants that complete their life cycles within two years. During first year of their growth, they complete vegetative growth and during next year they complete their reproductive phase of growth. Cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower etc are the best examples for biennial plants.

These are a group of plants with a long life span. Most of the shrubs and trees are perennials.