Landscape Design Glossary
Our Gateways To Your Garden Glossary
This glossary is a listing of words specific to the art of landscape design. In many cases these words and terms have been used within our publication.
This is not necessarily always the case.
These words may also have alternate definitions that are quite different than the ones described herein, that are not relevant to landscape design.
Those meanings will not be considered in this glossary.
We would appreciate hearing from our members and visitors if they have any landscape design terms they would like to see included in our listings. Simply email us by going to Contact Us in our Menu listings, with your suggestions.
Glossary of Landscape Design Terms:
– A –
Abreuvoir: A drinking place for animals, sometimes treated as a garden ornament.
Abstract: A design concept that has a generalized form with very little attempt at precise representation.
Accent Plants: Accent plants provide interest and generally stand out in the landscape to enhance the garden theme and provide dimension to the overall composition.
Access: A ways or means of approaching and idea or place.
Adaptation: This is an adjustment to a landscape concept that is common elsewhere, but adjusted to be accommodated in any given plan.
Adonis garden: Groupings of small gardens in terracotta pots. Supposedly they were placed outside Adonis temples during festivals.
Aesthetics: The perception of beauty in the garden plan or the site that the garden itself is situated in.
Aerial hedge: A connected canopy of trees or tree form shrubs that form a hedge suspended above straight trunks.
Alcove: An alcove is a curved recess in a wall or hedge and often used to house a sculpture, a seat or a fountain.
Allee: An allee is a walk bordered with trees or clipped hedges.
Allegory: A design technique used symbolically to represent a picture or idea.
Allotment Garden: A small parcel of land rented by an individual for growing vegetables, fruit & flowers.
Amphitheatre: A round structure, with tiers of seats rising gradually outward from a central area.
Anachronism: The placing of a garden theme or element in a venue where is does not belong.
Analogy: A resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike each other.
Analysis: An investigation of the nature and content of a design process and its relationship to the whole.
Anglo-chinois: A French term for the Serpentine Style of garden layout.
Annual Gardens: Annuals need to be replanted each year as their life span is limited by genetics or climate. Annuals are usually desired for their drama and color.
Anomaly: A deviation from the common rule of a design process.
Arcade: A series of arches with their columns or piers.
Arcadia: A region or scene of simple pleasure and quiet.
Aschitrave: This is a term used to identify the molding around a door or window.
Archetype: A landscape design that predates or seems to predate an identified design style.
Armillary sphere: This object is a type of spherical sundial.
Art nouveau: Art nouveau was a decorative movement that reached its zenith in the period 1893-1907.
Atrium: The central court of a structure, originally in a Roman house.
Authenticity: A conformance to an original, accepted form of landscape design that sets a standard.
Avenue: A street, roadway or large passage on any kind and in landscape design, usually with trees or big shrubs.
Axis: In landscape design, this is often a straight line, centered on a focal point as seen from a viewpoint.
– B –
Bailey: Originally the open area of a fortified castle and some of the space was used for castle gardens during the middle ages.
Balance: Balance is the relationship between elements in the landscape. Balance may be symmetrical on both sides of a vision line or simply similar in heights and mass.
Balled & Burlapped: Plants and trees are shipped after they have been dug up and the root balls wrapped with burlap and secured with twine.
Baluster: One of the short vertical posts that support a top rail and forms a balustrade.
Balustrade: A series of short vertical posts that support a top rail.
Baroque: This is a 17th century artistic style, generally expressed with elaborate ornamentation used on both architectural and landscape elements.
Basin: An enclosed or partly enclosed water area. (Merriam-Webster)
Base Map (BP): A drawing that incorporates all of the information collected about the landscape site from a field survey and provides the base data needed to establish a design.
Bastion: This is the projecting part of a rampart or earth berm.
Belvedere: A structure (as a cupola or a summerhouse) designed to command a view. (Merriam-Webster)
Berceau: A vaulted trellis, used to grow climbing plants.
Berm: A protective mound or raised mass of dirt.
Bonsai: Bonsai is a Japanese word (derived from the Chinese word penjing) meaning a shallow container garden.
Bosco: From an Italian word and applied to a wood of evergreen oak with a mysterious air. Apparently inspired by the ancient idea of making a Sacred Grove in association with an Egyptian temple.
Bosquet: From the French, a word used for a block of trees and shrubs separated by paths and may contain elaborate features (e.g. sculpture and fountains) hidden in the trees.
Bostan: Derived from the Persian word for ‘orchard’ or ‘fruit’ garden.
Botanical garden: A piece of land or park dedicated to displaying collections of plants for their beauty, uniqueness and interest of any kind.
Boulevard: A broad often landscaped thoroughfare. (Merriam-Webster)
Bower: A garden seat enclosed with overhead foliage.
Bowling green: Traditionally known as a hard flat lawn used for a game of tossing and rolling balls.
Bridge: This is a structure that one side of a bank with another side over a depression in the ground.
– C –
CAD Renderings: Digital computer files of landscape designs created by the landscape design professional.
Capital: A molded or carved head on a column or pilaster.
Campagna: This is an Italian term for open country.
Carpet bedding: This practice of planting bedding plants to create ornamental carpet like designs originated in the nineteenth century.
Cascade: A volume of water falling from a higher to a lower height, as in a waterfall or stream.
Chabutra: In an Indian garden, this is a sitting platform.
Chadar: In an Indian garden, this is a water chute or cascade.
Chahar Bagh: In a Persian garden, this is a ‘four square’ plan of the garden. The term is used in Iranian and Mughal gardens with the oldest example of a square garden being symmetrical crossing canals at the Alhambra.
Champain: An open level countryside venue.
Character: An expression of the essential nature that serves to identify and distinguish a gardens theme.
Chhatri: In an Indian garden, this is an umbrella-shaped pavilion.
Chinosierie: This term means ‘imitation of Chinese’ and is applied to the type of garden houses and other structures which became popular in the eighteenth century in England.
Clairvoie: This is a fence, grille or gate placed in an otherwise solid barrier thereby providing an open view of outside scenery.
Classicism: A design discipline that adheres to accepted traditional standards often demonstrated by Greek, Roman, Persian and other classic landscape forms.
Cloister: This word describes a part of a monastery to which the public was not allowed was often a rectangular lawn surrounded by a covered walk.
Clump: A group of trees or large plants planted together to form that group.
Coherence: The result of holding all or related parts of the landscape design together into a meaningful whole.
Collage: The act of merging often unrelated elements of a garden into a meaningful artistic or utilitarian representation.
Colonnade: Columns set at regular interval sand usually supporting the base of a roof structure.
Composition: This is the end result of combining various garden elements or ingredients into a pleasing and meaningful creation.
Conceit: A fanciful term used to denote an object or element with the landscape design that may have a decorative use but little other value within the design.
Concept Lines: Visible or invisible lines defining or dividing spatial areas in the landscape. Concept lines may become bed or edging lines in the garden design.
Concept Plan: In a landscape plan, this is a basic idea, containing the “big picture” of the ultimate garden scheme, without adding excessive details for simplicity of understanding.
Conservatory: This is a glass or plastic structure used to protect plants from cold weather.
Context: The interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs. (Merriam-Webster)
Continuity: A continuation of a specific garden element expression, without essential changes that would disrupt that expression.
Contour: A meaningful change in ground elevations, garden bedlines, visual horizon images or other interconnected landscape elements.
Contrast: In a garden design this is the essential act of demonstrating and elaborating the differences in tone, texture, color, styles, mass, styles and any number of other landscape element characteristics.
Convex/Concave: These are expressions of curvature with convex lines curving outwards and convex lines curving inwards as suggested by movements in the earths surface, garden bedlines, hardscape elements, etc.
Cornice: The upper most level of molding on an external or internal wall.
Coronary Garden: These gardens were used to grow flowers that could be used for wreaths and garlands.
Corridor: This is a strip of land passing between buildings or bordered by shrubbery masses, rows of trees or other garden objects.
Courtyard garden: This is a space mostly surrounded by walls or buildings.
Crinkle-Crankle Wall: This is a serpentine wall that has wrinkles, ripples and eccentric angles.
Curvilinear: Consisting of or bounded by curved lines. (Merrian-Webster)
Cross-section: A cross-sectional design requires one or more profile curves that describe a profile or cross-section of a landscape feature or element.
– D –
Deciduous: This is a tree or shrub that sheds its leaves in winter.
Deck: A flat floored roofless area generally adjoining a structure.
Decking: Materials are what form the flooring of a deck.
Decoration: To add elements to enrich or beautify the overall landscape installation.
Dentil: This is a simple projecting tooth like molding.
Design Elements: These are the plant materials and hardscapes items to be incorporated into the landscape.
Design Objectives: These are the goals that the client and landscape design professional determine to establish a direction for the landscape design process.
Design Team: The design team is made up of landscape design professionals, architects, engineers, horticulturists and other design disciplines required to complete a landscape design.
Dipping pool: This is a water basin from which to draw water for garden usage.
Dipping well: This is the source of water for a dipping pool.
Dike: A bank, usually an earthen elevated berm installed to hold back water, rocks or unwanted soil from entering a protected area.
Dimension: The units of measurement that determines, height, width, depth, distance, volume, mass and even time.
Diversity: The inclusion with a plan of an acceptable variety of plant or non-plant material or design ideas.
Dynamic: This relates to a sense of an increased sense of the energy or force visible in a landscape plan.
– E –
Easements: An easement is an area within the site that is dedicated for non-residential purposes such as building setbacks, drainage, utility or other mandated usages.
Eclectic: Rather than creating a specific thematic design, a plan is composed of elements drawn from various theme sources combined in an acceptable aesthetic manner.
Ecological: Create a landscape design compatible to a sites environment in terms of appearance and sustainability without negative impacts to that environment.
Edging: Edging in the landscape venue, is a line of demarcation that creates visual interest in the garden by separating one segment from another segment.
Elysium: An Elysium, as envisioned in the garden is an idealized place of perfect happiness as derived from Greek mythology.
Enclosure: In a landscape design, this is to surround, fence off or confine a specific area from another attached area.
Entablature: The level of decoration above the capital of a colonnade.
Entry Garden: This is the landscape area near the entry to a building.
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS): A statement or study prepared and submitted to authorities to affirm that a Site’s environmental concerns have been addressed before work is to commence.
Espalier: A tree, shrub or vine, trained to grow on a wall or fence into a specific pattern that is known as the “espalier” style.
Ethics: Landscape design professionals must adhere to and practice the principles of individual and professional conduct as accepted within their professional society.
Etoiole: From the French, this is a term used to describe a point where straight walks cross.
Eurythmy: This word, derived from the Greek eu (meaning good) and rhuthmos (meaning proportion or rhythm). Therefore used to denote a good proportion in garden design.
Exedra: In a garden, this is a semicircular area backed by a wall, fence or hedgerow.
Exotic: When referring to plants, this is one that is not native to the country or locale for a specific garden. It may also be an alluring garden element from an exotic locale.
Eye catcher: This is a garden element that is dramatic enough to catch a viewer’s attention from first sight.
– F –
Façade: The front of a building having architectural treatment.
Facilitate: This is the action of a landscape design professional and other design team members to assist each other to bring about or make easier, the entire project’s success.
Ferme Ornee: This is derived from the French=ornamented farm. The term can be used in modern gardens when describing a farm designed aesthetically to be seen as a garden.
Fernery: This may be a collection of ferns, either indoors or outdoors or a large garden segment devoted to a variety or varieties of fern.
Festoon: This is a garland of leaves or ribbons suspended in a loop between two points.
Field Survey: Also known as a site survey and is performed to gather any and all information pertaining to property particulars.
Flowery Mead: This is a medieval name for a lawn rich in wild flowers.
Flutes: This are rounded vertical grooves on a column or pilaster.
Folly: This is a building in the garden that is built primarily for visual effect; to “fool” the eye into thinking it is something other than what it is.
Formal: This term is applied to gardens that stress straight lines, right angles and circles.
Foundation Plantings: These are shrubs located in beds surrounding the base of a structure.
Framework: This is the basic structure of a garden or landscape that acts as a basis or framework for all other landscape elements that are to be incorporated in the plan.
Frieze: The decorative central level of the entablature.
Function: This is the action for which a garden is designed for and will ultimately be used for.
– G –
Garden: This is an area of land that is dedicated to the growing of vegetation for viewing pleasure, sustenance, recreation and physical activity.
Gardenesque: The term means ‘like a garden’ and ‘recognizable as a work of art, as distinct from a work of nature’.
Garden City: A residential community with an emphases on parks and planted areas as a centerpiece of its existence.
Garten: This is the German word for garden.
Garth: An open courtyard enclosed by a cloister.
Gate: This is an opening in a wall or fence and used as an entry into a garden environment.
Gazebo: A roofed outbuilding used for outdoor dining and entertaining.
Genious: Of- the- place: Derived from the Italian ‘genius locii’, this can be described as ‘the spirit of the place’.
Gestatio: This is an avenue set apart for exercise or egress.
Giardino: This is the Italian word for garden.
Giardino Segreto: This is the Italian for ‘secret garden’.
Giochi d’acqua: This is Italian term designating a concealed fountain that sprayed water on unsuspecting guests in renaissance gardens.
Glade: This is an open grassy are surrounded by a forest.
Gloriette: Within medieval gardens this was a summerhouse, often in the woods near a castle.
Godwottery: This is a term for gardening that is evident for its affected and elaborate style and characterized by pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, and flying buttresses, and by grotesque decorations.
Gothic: A style of architecture and ornament prevalent between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.
Grid: This is a network of uniformly spaced horizontal and perpendicular lines to organize spaces and used for drawing scaled landscape plans.
Grotto: An artificial recess or structure made to resemble a natural cave. (Merriam-Webster)
Groundcover: Groundcovers are low-lying plants selected for its aesthetic consideration and often used as a replacement for lawn grass for easy maintenance.
Group Plantings: A plant or compositions of plants standing away from a structure or other groups of plantings.
Guglio: This is a tapering column of stone, square or rectangular rather than cylindrical, and topped by a pyramid often used as a fountain.
Gulistan: This is a Persian work, meaning a rose or other flower garden.
– H –
Ha-Ha: This is a trench or boundary in a garden that keep out animals (usually farm inhabitants), without interrupting a vista from a given viewpoint.
Hardscape: Elements that include but are not limited to all structures, fountains, benches, gazebos and more that are incorporated into a landscape plan.
Hedge: These are dense shrubs or low trees that form a fence or boundary, often at the perimeters of a property or even as a small hedgerow at the base of a structure.
Herber: This is the medieval word for a planted garden.
Hermitage: A garden building calculated to raise an appreciation for contemplation and isolation when communing with nature.
Herbaceous: These are plants with non-woody stems.
Heritage Landscape: This is a landscape, usually preserved in its original or enhanced state for their historical or cultural value, and includes certain older trees such as oaks.
Hill: A usually rounded natural elevation of land lower than a mountain. (Merriam-Webster)
Hippodrome: Originally a Greek word for a racing course the Romans adopted the term for a garden space shaped like a racing track but most likely to be used for walking.
Horticulture: This is the science or art of cultivating fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants.
Hortus: This is the Latin word for garden.
Hortus conclusus: This is the Latin for enclosed garden.
– I –
Ichnographia: This is Greek word for a ground or landscape plan.
Icon: A sign (as a word or graphic symbol) whose form suggests its meaning. (Merriam-Webster), in gardens often a statue or art object having a specific meaning.
Identity: Sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing, and the condition of being the same with something described or asserted. (Merriam-Webster)
Ideology: In landscape terms, this is a body of concepts especially about human life or culture that be incorporated within a landscape venue complete with cultural icons and other garden objects.
Idyllic: This is an ideal garden form that is pleasing or picturesque in its natural simplicity.
Illusion: A perception of an object in such a manner as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature, such a trompe l’oile painted on flat surface that distorts perspective.
Image: This is a reproduction or imitation of the form of a person or thing or even an idea and incorporated within the landscape design.
Imaging: This is the act of calling up a mental picture of a landscape design in one’s mind.
Imaginary Lines: Lines that define spaces within a landscape concept.
Imagination: This is using the power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses and transplanting that image it to a drawing for implementation into reality.
Implementation: The process of installing the landscape with plant and other materials by a landscape contractor and in accordance with the plan.
Improver: From the 18th century, this was the process of converting a farm to a designed landscape.
Infrastructure: These are the buildings, utilities, pavement and other basic framework at the project site that needs to be incorporated within the landscape plan.
Informal: The opposite of formal in the landscape by having a more relaxed garden dominated by curved rather than straight bed lines and a less rigid thematic structure.
Irrigation /Sprinkler Plan: A CAD rendering of the proposed conceptual irrigation system. It included head placements and coverage, pipe sizing, GPM specs, and materials needed to install this system.
Interaction: This is the mutual and reciprocal action or influence between all members of the design team to complete a project.
Inventory: This is an accounting of the trees, shrubs, buildings and other structures, infrastructure and all other assets or deficits inherent on a project site.
Inversion: The reversal of existing landscape elements occurring over time, seen from a historical viewpoint or in onward projections to determine what changes will likely occur.
Irony: A subtle design style characterized by allowing the garden design to express a direct opposite of a thought in order to be humorous or sarcastic.
Island: A parcel of land surrounded by water and usually accessed by a bridge or boat.
– J –
Jardim: This is the Spanish word for garden.
Jardin: This is the French word for garden.
– K –
Karesansui: This is a Japanese Dry Garden, with water represented by sand or gravel.
Kiosk: This is a pavilion in an Islamic garden.
Knot garden: An elaborately designed garden especially of flowers or herbs. (Merriam-Webster)
– L –
Labyrinth: A place constructed of or full of intricate passageways and blind alleys. (Merriam-Webster)
Land-Art: A largely symbolic artistic representation using soil, water, rocks and boulders stacked and contoured, creating a design statement.
Landmark: These objects in a landscape plan may be note specific objects within the garden that will allow visitors to orient themselves when moving through the grounds.
Landscape 3D Renderer: This is a professional who creates a 3D perspective of the finished landscape so the client can see how it might look visually when finished.
Landscape Architect: This is a licensed professional who plans and designs landscapes and are usually schooled in engineering and architecture as well as in horticulture.
Landscape Artist: This is an artist who may sketch or paint an artist’s rendering of a proposed landscape in order to allow clients to experience the aesthetics of the design concept.
Landscape Designer: This is a professional who plans and develops landscape projects, usually at a residential or small commercial level with the major design impetus on plantings.
Landscape Engineer: The engineer works within the design team on the proposed hardscape items to ensure that they are structurally sound.
Landscape Horticulturists: This professional may assist the design team where their knowledge of specific plant materials cultural preferences is superior to that of the designers.
Landscape Plan: A completed landscape design is in plain view, detailing all elements in the landscape design process.
Lighting Plan: A rendering, often in a CAD format of all the proposed lighting fixtures is prepared to indicate which landscape elements are to be lighted at night.
Lion Dog: This is a Buddhist and Chinese statue originally placed in temples and outside buildings and in their gardens.
Loggia: A gallery or arcade that is open and roofed along the front or side of a building, and often on an upper level.
– M –
Mahal: This is an Indian word for temple.
Mali: This is the Indian word for gardener.
Manor: In Europe, a landed estate.
Mass Plantings: This is a form where many plants of the same species are used to fill an area.
Materials List: A completed list of all materials needed to implement the landscape designs.
Maze: A maze (as in a garden) formed by paths separated by high hedges. (Merriam-Webster)
Metaphor: A landscape element and elements that denote one kind of object or idea and used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
Metamorphosis: This term can describe a new landscape that demonstrates a great alteration in appearance, character, or circumstances from the original garden.
Mimesis: This indicates that a specific garden design mimics or is an imitation of another, probably well-known garden.
Minimalism: In a proper landscape design, this allows the designer to establish a plan completion in the most simple, direct manner without diminishing the design concept.
Mirador: This is a word from the Spanish mira to look and is a room or tower on the edge of a garden, from which there is a good view.
Mixed Border: This is a flowerbed with a mix of different plants such as herbaceous plants and shrubs.
Moat: This was originally a defensive feature but they can be used for ornamental reasons when they are used as a watercourse surrounding a garden.
Model: This can be a usually miniature representation of a landscape plans constructed to scale. It might also be a design to set an example for imitation or emulation.
Modernism: This assumes that a landscape plan demonstrates a new or at least up-to-date expression of themes with current or innovative garden elements.
Monumental:These are garden sculptures or other features that are significant in scale and size and are used to establish a feeling of importance to that garden segment.
Moongate: This is a circular aperture in a wall generally associated with Chinese gardens.
Mosaiculture: This is a French term for the use of bedding plants to form patterns in a garden bed.
Mossery: This may be a collection of mosses, either indoors or outdoors or a garden segment devoted to a variety or varieties of moss.
Moss House: This is a garden building with moss imbedded between wall slats.
Mount: This was a characteristic feature of English gardens in the middle ages. A summerhouse on top of a hill or mound, provided a view out from a garden.
Mysticism: A garden design may attempt to create the experience of a mystical union with a source, perhaps of a religious, magical or spiritual nature.
Mythology: Elements within the landscape may showcase myths that deal with gods, demigods, and legendary heroes, in statuaries, sculptures or other iconic representations.
– N –
Nature: This is the entire world, but in landscape terms we restrict it down to the local site environment that is natural to the locale the garden is in.
Neoclassicism: Landscape artistic style of the late eighteenth century, characterized by its regularity and uniformity as well as its close resemblance to the art of classical antiquity.
Niche: This is a shallow recess in a wall, hedge for displaying a statue, sculpture, vase or other garden objects.
Niwa: This is the Japanese word for garden.
– O –
Obelisk: This is an upright, four-sided and tapered pillar that terminates in a pyramid.
Orangery: A glassed (greenhouse) building housing potted orange trees during the winter. Citrus trees are moved outside during the warmer month, often in decorative pots.
Orchard: This is a place for growing fruit trees.
Order: Generally, in landscape planning, this is the act of, or the condition of garden elements being arranged in a proper, appropriate of pleasing order.
Orientation: In most cases in the landscape world, this noun indicates how the garden or a garden element is arranged in relationship to a major feature or to a direction.
Ornament: A garden feature that is an attractive accessory, something that lends grace or beauty or adorns and supplies grace or luster to the landscape.
Oxymoron: This might be a landscape symbol or even garden theme that provides a combination of contradictory or incongruous images or concepts.
– P –
Panorama: This might be referred to as an unobstructed or complete view of an expanded area as seen from a major viewpoint.
Paradigm: This may indicate the current accepted philosophical or theoretical framework for a chosen landscape concept or perhaps the implementation of a new acceptable change.
Palissade: This is a French term for a fence made of wooden stakes.
Paradise: This word came from the Persian name ‘paradeisos’ for a park stocked with exotic animals and the word Paradise was used by the Greeks to mean ‘an ideal place’.
Paradox: This may indicate that a landscape design solution is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps relevant to the observer.
Parapet: A low protective wall or railing on the edge of a walk, a roof, or an embankment.
Park: A tract of land that often includes lawns, woodland, gardens and recreation areas, normally for public use.
Parterre: An ornamental garden with paths between beds often bordered by low, easy to maintain shrubs trimmed into decorative forms and filled with flowers or other fills.
Parterre de Broderie: This is a parterre with a pattern resembling embroidery.
Pastoral: This type of garden relates to the countryside and is usually considered to be pleasingly peaceful and innocent in character.
Patte d’oie: This represents three radiating garden avenues that are named after a goose’s foot.
Patio: This is a partially open sided relaxation or recreation area that adjoins a dwelling, used for entertaining, outdoor dining and simply enjoying the outdoor environment.
Pavilion: The word derives from the Latin papilio-butterfly. Originally the word meant a tent and now in gardens it is used for an airy and light building.
Pavimentum: This word come from the Latin pavire = to ram down, is used to describe a pavement made from pieces of stone or ceramic hammered down to make a walking surface.
Pedestal: This is a block used as a stand for a vase, an urn or a statue.
Pediment: The architectural detail above a window or door.
Penjing: This is the Chinese word for a tray garden, and relates to Japanese ‘bonsai’.
Perception: This is to experience an awareness of the elements of the environment through physical sensations thereby leading to an understanding of the landscape design concept.
Perennial Gardens: Perennial garden plants provide seasonal interest for a longer period of time than annual gardens and can serve as focal points in the landscape.
Peristyle: A group of columns surrounding a courtyard, or temple, and used to support a roof.
Pergola: A structure usually consisting of parallel colonnades supporting an open roof of girders and cross rafters. (Merriam-Webster). Also called a trellis.
Perspective: A representation in a drawing or painting of parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance. (Merriam-Webster).
Physic Garden: This is a special garden used for growing medicinal plants.
Picturesque: This landscape forms evoke mental images that may be charming or quaint in appearance.
Pilaster: A rectangular column including its base and capital.
Pinery: This is usually is conservatory for growing pineapples, and the term could be extended to outdoor growing as well.
Pinetum: This is a collection of coniferous trees.
Piscina: This is a stone basin used as a fishpond or a bathing-pond.
Plan: A drawing or diagram established to create an orderly arrangement of elements of the overall design and to establish a method to create a completed garden scheme.
Plat: This is an area (plot) of ground that can be a series on building lots or even one lot that might accommodate a structure.
Planter: This is an ornamental container for growing plants.
Plantscape: The composite grouping of plants in a meaningful pattern through the landscape.
Plaza: An open area usually located near urban buildings and often featuring walkways, trees and shrubs, places to sit, and sometimes shops. (Merriam-Webster).
Pleaching: This is the practice of bending and inter-twining plants. Pleached trees grow together to form a hedge on stilts.
Pleasance: This is land used for pleasure that attached to a castle or mansion, usually outside the fortifications, and could be used to describe major estate pleasure gardens today.
Pomarium: This is a medieval term for an apple orchard.
Portico: A porch derived from an architectural design used widely by Palladio and his followers, which consists of a colonnade supporting a pedimented roof of varying depth.
Potager: This is the French word for a vegetable garden.
Praeneste: In Rome, this was a series of great terraces linked by ramps.
Privy –Garden: This a private garden, usually made for the sole use of a king or queen in past days.
Promenade: This is a design concept that allows people to walk about easily in the garden without fear of obstructions or diversions.
Proportion: This is a goal to design a harmonious relation of all parts to each other or to the whole while achieving a balance or symmetry through the landscape.
Prospect: This is a view.
Pilaster: A rectangular column, including its base and capital, set into the face of a wall.
Plinth: A block or slab upon which a column, pedestal, or statue is based; also the bottom course of stones supporting a wall — the plinth course.
Portico: A porch derived from an architectural design used widely by Palladio and his followers, which consists of a colonnade supporting a pedimented roof of varying depth.
– Q –
Quincunx: A design incorporating five objects, often trees, with one at each corner of a rectangle and one at the center.
Quoin: A stone or formed stucco decorative work laid at the exterior corners and angles of a building.
– R –
Rampart: A defensive fortification consisting of an embankment and topped by a parapet.
Redoubt: A defensive earthwork fortification used to reinforce a permanent rampart.
Renaissance: The transitional movement in Europe between medieval and modern times (14th–17th century) marked by a classical influence in garden design.
Rendering (2D): A 2 dimensional rendering is a overhead or “plan” view of a plan demonstrating design cohesion balance and “flow” of landscape elements on the property.
Rendering (3D): A 3 dimensional perspective is to better demonstrate the finished landscape project before the actual construction. A 3D result is similar to a photograph.
Restoration: This is the act of restoring or the condition of being restored of the original garden to its original or improved condition.
Rill: This is a small watercourse.
Rift: A fissure, crevasse or fault in the soil ore rockery.
Rocaille: This is rockwork, shell work or pebble work.
Rococo: An early eighteenth century artistic style characterized by energy, lightness, delicacy, playfulness, and self-conscious artificiality.
Rock Garden: This is style of garden for growing mountain plants, cactus, succulents and other plants that look comfortable in an arid rocky environment.
Roji: This is a ‘dewy path’ to a teahouse in a Japanese garden
Romanticism: This almost generic term is most often used in landscape design to describe a landscape that might be an improvement over nature, as idealized in the 17th century.
Root House: This is a garden building made with roots, trunks, stumps, branches and other parts of trees.
Rosarium: This is a rose garden.
Rotunda: This is a circular, domed building or hall.
Rural: In landscaping terms, this is a site that is in or relates to the country, its people, lifestyle or artifacts.
Rustication: This is stonework with a rough surfaces and recessed joints.
– S –
Sacred Groves: These areas were inside temple compounds. In Homeric Greece they were places of resort, outside citadels, often used for meditation, and intellectual conversations.
Scale: The relationship between the actual sizes of something that is being represented on a plan and often how landscape elements relate in reality in a plans implementation.
Scene: This is the design objective of any or all of a garden from a specific viewpoint within that garden.
Screening Plantings: These are shrubs used to provide privacy, block a poor view, or as a natural boundary or barrier.
Shakkei: This is ‘borrowed’ scenery (e.g. a mountain) in a Japanese garden.
Shrubs: These are low woody plants, usually with multiple shoots or stems emanating from their bases.
Seasonal Interest or Color: Various plants, particularly annuals provide a dramatic show of color or tone during certain times of the year and this fact is planned for in the design.
Shin-gyo- so: These are terms used to describe respectfully, a formal, semiformal and informal style of Japanese garden design
Shoin-zukuri: This is the study (shoin) style (zukuri) style of laying out a Japanese garden.
Sightline: A line extending from an observer’s eye to a viewed object (Merriam-Webster).
Simplicity: The state of being simple, uncomplicated, or uncompounded (Merriam-Webster).
Site: The space of ground to received landscaped improvements.
Site Analysis: The act of determining the elements inherent within a site that must be accounted for within the landscape plan.
Sketch: A rough drawing representing the chief features of an object or scene and often made as a preliminary study. (Merriam-Webster).
Splash pool: A small pool normally used by children as a relatively safe play area with water.
Specimen: This plant is grown by itself in a lawn or garden for its ornamental effect, rather than massed with other bedding or edging plants.
Stream: A body of running water (as a river or brook) flowing on the earth (Merriamp-Webster).
Stewpond: This is a fishpond in a monastery garden.
Stroll Garden: This is a Japanese garden planned to reveal a series of views as a visitor strolls along the paths throughout the gardens.
Suburb: The residential area on the outskirts of a city or large town. (Merriam-Webster).
Sundial: This is a device that uses the sun to tell the time and used as a garden ornament.
Symmetry: The correspondence in size, shape, and relative position of parts on opposite sides of a dividing line or median plane or about a center or axis. (Merriam-Webster)
Synergy: The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that the combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
Synthesis: The composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole. (Merriam-Webster).
System: A regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole (Merriam-Webster).
– T –
Taste: This term is used to define the capability of sophistication in recognizing or creating a landscape design to the highest level within a given culture.
Terracotta: An earth tone clay material used for pottery.
Terrace: Usually an open platform with or with a roof and often with columns or perhaps trellised side panels used to entertainment or relaxation purposes.
Tetrastyle: An architectural unit consisting of four columns.
Textures: In both plantscape and hardscapes elements, there are visual and tactile characteristics that range from smooth to rough, fuzzy to crisp and a whole world of difference in between.
Theatre: In the landscape venue this is tiers or terraces in a hillside in a concave formation of seats to form a classical outdoor theatre.
Theme: This is a subject or topic of artistic representation of a garden that has a specific and distinctive quality, characteristic, or concern.
Threshold: This is the point at which a gardens visual or psychological effect begins to evident in the plan as well as an actual solid base beneath a door.
Thumbnails: A Thumbnail is a reduced-size version of a term or word description and used to help in recognizing and organizing the landscape design terminology.
Tonsure: The shaping of evergreens by clipping.
Topiary: Plants are shaped out of live shrubs and trees into decorative shapes. Wire forms stuffed with sphagnum moss can allow plants to grow into a specific form.
Topography: The configuration of a surface including its relief and the position of its natural and man-made features as well as the physical or natural features of a landscape site.
Torii: This is a gateway at the entrance to a Japanese Shinto shrine and is often used in a garden venue to effectively set a Japanese theme.
Traverse: Usually a path or other landscape passageway through a garden segment.
Tree: A woody perennial plant having a single usually elongate main stem generally with few or no branches on its lower part. (Merriam-Webster)
Treillage: This is grillwork frame, often to support vines and usually made of wood, plastic or metal, latticework in squares, rectangular or diagonal patterns.
Trompe l’oeil: This is an illusion which ‘deceives the eye’, often painted or fabricated of some solid materials on a flat surface such as a wall or fence.
Tufa: This is a rough texture and soft, black, grey or brown volcanic stone, used in making grottos.
– U –
Unity: This is a term to suggest that all aspects of the landscape complement and sustain one another.
Urban: In landscaping terms, this is a site that is in or relates to the city, its people, lifestyle or artifacts.