Gardening Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This gardening quiz has 118 free questions with answers and covers everything from the potting shed to the palace grounds: how compost, soil pH and NPK fertiliser work, why hydrangeas change colour, what deadheading and espalier mean, and which plants are annuals, biennials or perennials. It visits Kew, Versailles, Keukenhof and Monet's Giverny, meets Capability Brown, Gertrude Jekyll, Luther Burbank and Monty Don, and takes in tulip mania, victory gardens, the Chelsea Flower Show and the seed vault buried in Arctic permafrost. The early questions suit anyone with a windowsill herb pot; the later ones will stretch allotment veterans and RHS members with the origins of the lawn mower, the science of nitrogen fixation and the wisteria that weighs 250 tons. It makes a good round for a garden club evening, a horticulture class or a rainy-day family quiz. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and reference sources, and each question shows an explanation and its citation once you answer.
30 of 118 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is a plant that completes its whole life cycle in a single growing season called?
An annual
An annual such as the sunflower germinates, flowers, sets seed and dies within one growing season, so it must be sown afresh each year.
Q 02Which culinary herb is a biennial, growing leaves in its first year and flowering in its second?
Parsley
Parsley is a biennial: it makes leaves in its first year, then flowers, sets seed and dies in its second, so cooks who want the leaves usually pull it up after one season and sow again.
Q 03Dry leaves, straw and shredded cardboard, the 'browns' of a compost heap, are rich in what?
Carbon
Carbon-rich browns balance the soggy greens: grass clippings piled up on their own turn into a slimy, smelly mess, so composters mix in dry leaves or cardboard.
Q 04On a fertiliser bag's N-P-K numbers, what element is K?
Potassium
Potassium takes its K from the Latin name kalium; gardeners still call it potash, after the wood ashes once soaked and boiled down in iron pots to extract it.
Q 05A soil with a pH reading below 7 is described as what?
Acidic
Acidic soil, with a pH below 7, suits rhododendrons, camellias and heathers; for crops that dislike it, gardeners raise the pH by spreading ground limestone, sold as garden lime.
Q 06In acidic soil, what colour do the flowers of many hydrangeas turn?
Blue
Blue: in acidic soil aluminium becomes soluble, the hydrangea takes it up and its flowers turn blue; in alkaline soil the same plant flowers pink.
Q 07Charles Darwin's last book, published in 1881, was a study of which garden helper?
The earthworm
The earthworm: Darwin found his worms ignored a whistle, a bassoon and shouting, so judged them deaf, yet they shot back into their burrows when their pot stood on a piano and a note was struck.
Q 08What is the horticultural practice of removing spent flowers from a plant called?
Deadheading
Deadheading removes faded flowers before they set seed, so the plant redirects energy into new buds and often produces a second flush of blooms.
Q 09What is the technique of training a fruit tree flat against a wall or frame called?
Espalier
Espalier was developed in Europe to coax fruit from a cool climate: branches trained flat against a sunny wall share its stored heat, and the flat shape also fits a tree into a narrow space.
Q 10The Chinese art that parallels Japanese bonsai is called what?
Penjing
Penjing came first: the art of potted trees and landscapes grew up in China and was carried to Japan, where Zen Buddhism shaped it into bonsai.
Q 11Which of these shrubs is a classic choice for topiary?
Box
Box, known as boxwood in North America, is prized for topiary because its small evergreen leaves stay dense under close shearing; yew, holly and privet are other favourites.
Q 12Seeds taken from Brazil to Kew Gardens in 1876 founded Asia's plantations of which crop?
Rubber
Rubber: Henry Wickham brought some 70,000 seeds out of Brazil, and though only a few thousand sprouted at Kew, their seedlings went on to Ceylon and Malaya and broke Brazil's monopoly.
Q 13Which landscape designer perfected the French formal garden style at Versailles?
André Le Nôtre
André Le Nôtre made his name at Vaux-le-Vicomte; weeks after a lavish party there in 1661, Louis XIV had its owner, Fouquet, arrested and put the same team to work on Versailles.
Q 21In 1893 the US Supreme Court ruled that, for tariff purposes, the tomato was a what?
A vegetable
In Nix v. Hedden (1893) the court called the tomato a vegetable for tariff purposes because it is served with dinner rather than dessert, though botanically it is a berry.
Q 22The 'Three Sisters' planted by indigenous peoples of the Americas are maize, beans and what?
Squash
Squash completes the trio: the corn stalks give the beans a pole to climb, while the broad squash leaves shade the ground, keeping it moist and smothering weeds.
Q 23Dutch tulip mania's prized flame-striped petals were caused by what?
A virus
A virus streaked the petals and slowly sapped the bulbs' vigour, so Dutch collectors were paying their highest prices for diseased plants.
Q 14Keukenhof, the Dutch park planted with about 7 million bulbs a year, has a name meaning what?
Kitchen garden
Kitchen garden: in the 15th century these grounds supplied game and garden produce to the kitchens of Teylingen Castle, and the spring bulb show did not open until 1950.
Q 15The village of Giverny in Normandy is famous for the garden of which painter?
Claude Monet
Claude Monet lived at Giverny from 1883 until his death in 1926; the water-lily pond and Japanese bridge he made there became the subject of his late Nymphéas paintings.
Q 16Why are Babylon's Hanging Gardens unique among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
Their location has never been established
Their location has never been established: digs at Babylon have found no trace and Babylonian texts never mention them, so some scholars place the gardens at Nineveh instead.
Q 17Which 18th-century gardener dammed a stream to make the great lake in the park at Blenheim Palace?
Capability Brown
Capability Brown earned his nickname by telling clients their grounds had 'capability' for improvement; Blenheim, where his lake half-drowned Vanbrugh's bridge, was one of more than 170 parks.
Q 18Gertrude Jekyll planted gardens for the houses of which architect, later the planner of New Delhi?
Edwin Lutyens
Edwin Lutyens was just starting out when he met Jekyll, who had turned from painting to gardens as her eyesight failed; her own house, Munstead Wood, was the first of their joint projects.
Q 19Which famous white-petalled garden flower was among Luther Burbank's 800-plus plant varieties?
The Shasta daisy
The Shasta daisy took Burbank years of crossing four daisy species; a russet-skinned mutation of his first success, a potato, became the Idaho baking potato.
Q 20Monty Don took over as lead presenter of BBC's Gardeners' World in 2003, replacing whom?
Alan Titchmarsh
Alan Titchmarsh left in 2002 after six years; his successor Monty Don was a self-taught gardener who had run a costume jewellery business until it folded.
Q 24Apples, pears, strawberries, cherries and almonds all belong to the same botanical group as which flower?
The rose
The rose family, Rosaceae, shares more than looks: its seeds often carry amygdalin, which is why apple pips, cherry stones and bitter almonds can all release traces of cyanide.
Q 25The dahlia is the national flower of which country?
Mexico
Mexico's national flower is a native: the Aztecs grew the dahlia long before the Spanish conquest carried it to Europe, and its tubers store inulin rather than starch.
Q 26Ladybirds are welcomed by gardeners because they eat what?
Aphids
Aphids are the main prey of most garden ladybirds, and the larvae are voracious hunters too, which is why growers buy the beetles to release as living pest control.
Q 27The 'lady' in ladybird refers to whom?
The Virgin Mary
The Virgin Mary: the beetle was 'Our Lady's bird', its red wing cases said to recall the red cloak she wears in early paintings and its seven spots her seven sorrows.
Q 28Which First Lady had a victory garden planted at the White House during World War II?
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt got her plot despite protests from the Agriculture Department and from her husband, who reportedly wanted her told the yard was 'full of rocks'; millions of Americans planted their own.
Q 29The RHS's Great Spring Show is held each May in the grounds of which London institution?
The Royal Hospital Chelsea
The Royal Hospital Chelsea lent its grounds for a one-off international exhibition in 1912; the site worked so well that the RHS moved its Great Spring Show there the next year.
Q 30The Royal Horticultural Society, founded in 1804, has its flagship garden where?
Wisley, Surrey
Wisley, Surrey, began as one member's experimental garden for 'difficult' plants; after he died, Sir Thomas Hanbury bought it and gave it to the society in 1903.