What Is The Difference Between Gardening And Landscaping?

If you're landscaping or gardening, all entail designing and preserving practical, aesthetically pleasing outdoor spaces. In small backyards or parks , golf courses and building complexes, both activities can be hobbies or professions. Despite similarities between landscaping and gardening, variations exist between them, but the distinction dividing the two is sometimes blurred and subjective.

 

Landscape

Dutch artists of the 16th century used the term "landschap" to describe landscape paintings on the ground. The modern English term "landscape" borrows from the Dutch language and refers to a visual representation of outdoor spaces. Landscaping, therefore, is about visualizing an image for a space, and then constructing that space. Landscaping involves botanical elements, such as trees, lawns and shrubs and other flora, as well as hardscapes, such as pathways, furniture, planting beds, water features and fences.

 

Landscape Professionals

Landscape architects, designers and contractors perform diverse yet overlapping services. Landscape architects require a degree in landscape architecture and must pass a national test in order to obtain a licence. These professionals work on a range of project styles and sizes, from the design and execution of a residential yard to the designing of transportation services, resorts and waterfront projects. Landscape designers do not need formal education, but professional organizations will accredit them on the basis of their experience of design work. Designers usually work on small-scale or residential projects and do not generally work with landscape contractors until completion of the design process. Landscape contractors execute the vision of the architect or designer by designing structures and adding hardscape and botanical elements. Contractors may also restrict their business to the maintenance of gardens and gardens, in which case they are essentially gardeners.

 

Gardening

Gardening, like landscaping, requires design, preparation and maintenance, but gardening typically involves only plants in space. Landscape designers and gardeners can draw up a garden design and list the plants, but only the gardeners can plant, weed, cultivate, replace and harvest the plants. Gardening is an ongoing practice since gardens need year-round maintenance and advanced care. Gardening also includes knowledge, through experience and education, of many natural processes, including soil ecology, climate, plant physiology, water drainage and pest infestation.

 

Gardening Professionals

Trained gardeners may have a degree in horticulture or botany. A master gardener program can be completed by other experienced gardeners. Master Gardener programs typically require multiple hours of instruction from academic and technical instructors in the area of gardening or horticulture. For example, the California Master Gardeners program needs more than 50 hours of instruction and annual quotas for volunteer hours and continuing education.

 

Variety Of Gardens

Gardens can vary from a simple arrangement of plants to a rock garden. Gardening may be very specialized in one type of plant or fruit or tree with a mixture of plants. There are home gardens next to the house; wet gardens that grow water plants or plants around ponds; rock gardens that use rock elevations to plant plants in and around the rocks. Some homeowners are designing rock gardens to exploit the rocky slopes in their yards. Others are importing rocks into yards that are smooth and rockless. With planting, there is no improvement in the landscape of the garden.

 

In landscaping, whole plots can be dug with heavy machinery, and the land can be modified by importing not just plants, but different types of soil and plants that may not be native to the area.