Gardening Monthly - Horticulture

If you're obsessed with gardening and anything that even remotely involves plants, and their well being, then you’re probably a closet horticulturist.

But what is the definition of a horticulturist? It's classified as a person who grows and cultivates plants, amongst other things. In other words a gardener right? A

Rose by any other name is still a Rose. Clichéd words yes, but true nevertheless. The only difference between a horticulturist and a gardener is the fancy title and the fact that a horticulturist gets paid much more money!

They get paid in money, you get paid in blooms. So, you can now go around telling your friends that you’re deep into the study of horticulture.

What is horticulture? It’s a funny thing really when you get right down to the roots of it. Horticulture by its very definition is the cultivation of a garden, or in other words, the science of cultivation of any types of plants like, vegetables, fruits, and flowers. A horticultural plant is defined as one that has been produced by cultivation, and not one that has grown without a helping hand.

Horticulture is derivved from two Latin words, "hortus", meaning "garden plant", and cultura, meaning "culture". In its truest form spans across many fields and involves many different types of careers, ranging from industry, to government, from wholesale and retail businesses, to propagators, plant breeders, and even educational institutions. Everyone's a horticulturist these days!

Horticulture enthusiasts have five main areas to choose from. Landscape horticulture, which is involved in the production and maintenance of landscape plants is one.

Floriculture primarily deals with the marketing, and production of floral crops, whilst olericulture deals with vegetables cultivation.

Pomology, and postharvest physiology are the last two of the five areas of horticulture. The study of pomology is based on the growing, production, and ultimately the marketing of fruits, whilst the study of postharvest physiology channels its energies into the promotion of crop quality, and reduction of overall spoilage for all crops to gain the best market share and prices at the end of the day.

So now that you have a general view of horticulture and the areas associated with it, perhaps you would really like to get yourself dug into it!

If you are interested, there are always classes on horticulture that you could go take to share hours of gardening pleasure with like-minded souls and at the same time learning more about your chosen area of horticulture.