Types Of Plants

Annuals: are short lived, but are some of the most popular plants creating bright splashes of colour. They grow from seed, develop flowers and produce seed for sowing the following year.

Biennials: are sown one year and flower during the following year. They are sown usually during early summer or mid- summer, and subsequently thinned or transplanted into nursery beds. Then in the autumn they are planted into their flowering positions.

Herbaceous Perennials: are popular border plants,that create vivid colour every year. During autumn , they die down to soil-level, surviving the winter in a dormant state and then in the spring the roots send up fresh shoots. Herbaceous perennials create most of their new shoots around the outside of the clump, and after a few years the centre becomes old and woody. When this happens, the whole clump can be lifted and young pieces from around the outside be replanted.

Bulbs: for the better part flower in the late winter and spring, however a few bloom in the summer. Some of the best known flowering bulbs are daffodils and tulips- the onion is a popular culinary example. The bulb (botanically speaking), is an underground storage organ with a bud-like structure and fleshy, scale-like leaves which are tightly wraped around each other. At times the term bulb, is loosely used to describe other energy-storing underground organs such as tubers, corms, and rhizomes. Tubers are swollen stems or roots,dahlias are root tubers, while potatoes are stem types. Corms, such as crocuses and gladioli have greatly enlarged stem bases and rizomes are eitherthick and partially buried or slender and totally underground.

Alpines: in nature, grow in alpine regions where they thrive above the tree-line but below the permanent frost-line. However in garden terms, it means any plant grown in a rock garden. True alpines are very hardy and survive low temperatures, but garden alpines are soon damaged by cold and water.

Conifers: can mature to over 30m (100ft) high, while others reveal a ground-hugging habit. Most conifers are evergreen but a few, such as the maidenhair tree(Ginkgo biloba), are deciduous and bear a fresh array of leaves each spring. Conifers usually bear their seeds in cones.

Shrubs: persist from year to year,creating a permanent feature in the garden.  Shrubs which differ dramatically from trees, have many stems arising from below or level the soils surface.

Trees: are distinguished from shrubs by having a single, woody strem(trunk) that grows from soil level to where the branches arise.They are also woody structures like the shrubs, some living for hundreds of years.