I have lost count on how many times that I have been at social gatherings and somebody has come up to me and asked me a horticulture or landscape design question. I am pretty knowledgeable in the ornamental horticulture field, but there have been a few times that I have been stumped for an answer.

As I get older, the brain synapses’ aren’t firing as quickly as they had been. So when I took my daughters to story time at the Ewing branch of the Mercer County Library System and Miss Sue was reading a story and it had mentioned planting a garden bed, she looked at me and asked why do they call it a garden bed?

Once I got over the feeling of a deer caught in someone’s headlights, I replied that I wasn’t sure of were the term came from. I know the term garden border was derived from medieval England. Garden borders were cultivated areas raised and framed with wooden boards, hence the term boarder or border.

As an educated guess I would say that the term garden bed came from the way the garden area looks after the soil has been cultivated and fluffed up. To me it could look like a nice soft bed.

The greatest problem I encounter with family, friends or clients is when they are describing a plant that they saw somewhere, or that a great aunt had growing by her back porch. They have no idea what it is called, or they call it by some vague name that fits several other plant varieties.

My wife brought home some pots that were giving to her by a coworker who potted up some perennials for our garden. All I was told were that they were spiky and pink. Not much to go on. Well they started to grow and were showing some green leaves and I was able to deduce that they are gladiolus and would make a nice addition to the garden.

As a garden designer the best possible solution would be a picture of the plant with it’s official scientific name for genera and species which is usually in Latin or Greek. This way there would be no mistaken the identity of the plant. Most good garden books have pictures with scientific names and common names with a description of the plant, an invaluable tool for the new home owner.

Scientific names are standardized throughout the world, and there is something called the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants to keep track. So if I was talking about Hydrangea quercifolia, or oakleaf hydrangea, to someone in Germany, they would also know it as Hydrangea quercifolia, though perhaps with a different common name.

The species name can also be descriptive of the plant, as in the hydrangea example: Quercus is the genus for oak, and folia means leaf. This nomenclature makes it so much easier to identify plants.

Next time you are at a garden center looking at plants and getting ideas for your garden, don’t forget to write down the scientific name of plants for your garden design professional.

Craig Dupee is a garden-design consultant. He resides in Ewing with his wife and children. Reach him by e-mail at hort1014u@aol.com.