Nursery (horticulture)

A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to usable size.

There are retail nurseries which sell to the general public, wholesale nurseries which sell only to other nurseries and to commercial landscape gardeners, and private nurseries which supply the needs of institutions or private estates. Some retail and wholesale nurseries sell by mail.
Nurseries grow annuals, perennials, and woody plants (trees and shrubs). These have a variety of uses: decorative plants for flower gardening and landscaping, garden vegetable plants, and agricultural plants.
Nurseries often grow plants in a greenhouse, a building of glass or in plastic tunnels, designed to protect young plants from harsh weather (especially frost), while allowing access to light and ventilation. Modern greenhouses allow automated control of temperature, ventilation and light and semi-automated watering and feeding. Some also have fold-back roofs to allow "hardening-off" of plants without the need for manual transfer to outdoor beds.
Some nurseries specialize in one phase of the process: propagation, growing out, or retail sale; or in one type of plant: groundcovers, shade plants, fruit trees, or rock garden plants.
Nurseries remain highly labour-intensive. Although some processes have been mechanised and automated, others have not. It remains highly unlikely that all plants treated in the same way at the same time will arrive at the same condition together, so plant care requires observation, judgement and manual dexterity; selection for sale requires comparison and judgement. A UK nurseryman has estimated that manpower accounts for 70% of his production costs.
Business is highly seasonal, concentrated in spring and autumn. There is no guarantee that there will be demand for the product - this will be affected by temperature, drought, cheaper foreign competition, fashion, etc. A nursery carries these risks and fluctuations.
Annuals are sold in trays (undivided containers with multiple plants), flats (trays with built-in cells), peat pots, or plastic pots. Perennials and woody plants are sold either in pots, bare-root or balled and burlaped and in a variety of sizes, from liners to mature trees.
Plants may be propagated by seeds, but often desirable cultivars are propagated asexually by budding, grafting, layering, or other nursery techniques.

Organic horticulture

Organic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables,

flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heritage-species preservation.
The Latin words hortus (garden plant) and cultura (culture) together form horticulture, classically defined as the culture or growing of garden plants. Horticulture is also sometimes defined simply as “agriculture minus the plough (or plow).” Instead of the plough, horticulture makes use of human labour and gardener’s cultivation tools, or of small machine tools like rotary tillers.

Bougainvillea

Bougainvillea is a genus of flowering plants native to South America from Brazil west to Peru and south to southern Argentina (Chubut Province). Different authors accept between four and 18 species in the genus. The name comes from Louis Antoine de Bougainville, an admiral in the French Navy who encountered the plant in Brazil in 1768 and first described it to Europeans.
They are thorny, woody, vines growing anywhere from 1-12 meters tall, scrambling over other plants with their hooked thorns. The thorns are tipped with a black, waxy substance that is easily left in the flesh of an unsuspecting victim. They are evergreen where rainfall occurs all year, or deciduous if there is a dry season. The leaves are alternate, simple ovate-acuminate, 4-13 cm long and 2-6 cm broad. The actual flower of the plant is small and generally white, but each cluster of three flowers is surrounded by three or six bracts with the bright colors associated with the plant, including pink, magenta, purple, red, orange, white, or yellow. Bougainvillea glabra is sometimes referred to as "paper flower" because the bracts are thin and papery. The fruit is a narrow five-lobed achene.
Bougainvillea are relatively pest-free plants, but may suffer from worms and aphids. The larvae of some Lepidoptera species also use them as food plants, for example the Giant Leopard Moth.

Cultivation and uses
Bougainvilleas are popular ornamental plants in most areas with warm climates, including Indonesia, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, the Mediterranea region, the Caribbean, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, South Africa, and the United States in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, and southern Texas, France - Greece - Turkey - Italy - Netherlands. Numerous cultivars and hybrids have been selected, including nearly thornless shrubs. Some Bougainvillea cultivars are sterile, and are propagated from cuttings.
Bougainvillea are rapid growing and flower all year in warm climates, especially when pinched or pruned. They grow best in moist fertile soil. Bloom cycles are typically four to six weeks. Bougainvillea grow best in very bright full sun and with frequent fertilization, but the plant requires little water to flower. As indoor houseplants in temperate regions, they can be kept small by bonsai techniques. If overwatered, Bougainvillea will not flower and may lose leaves or wilt, or even die from root decay.
Because of the aggressive growth of hardened thorns and prolific branches, this plant is ideal as a natural barrier for security applications.

Symbolism
Various species of bougainvillea are the official flowers of the island of Grenada, the island of Guam, of Lienchiang and Pingtung Counties in Taiwan; Ipoh, Malaysia; and of the cities of Tagbilaran, Philippines; Camarill, California; Laguna Niguel, California; and San Clemente, California.

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus in 1773.
Acacias are also known as thorntrees or wattles, including the yellow-fever acacia and umbrella acacias. There are roughly 1300 species of Acacia worldwide, about 960 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas.

Organic horticulture

Organic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heritage-species preservation.
The Latin words hortus (garden plant) and cultura (culture) together form horticulture, classically defined as the culture or growing of garden plants. Horticulture is also sometimes defined simply as “agriculture minus the plough (or plow).” Instead of the plough, horticulture makes use of human labour and gardener’s cultivation tools, or of small machine tools like rotary tillers.

Fertilizer

Fertilizers (also spelled fertilisers) are compounds given to plants to promote growth; they are usually applied either through the soil, for uptake by plant roots, or by foliar feeding, for uptake through leaves. Fertilizers can be organic (composed of organic matter), or inorganic (made of simple, inorganic chemicals or minerals). They can be naturally occurring compounds such as peat or mineral deposits, or manufactured through natural processes (such as composting) or chemical processes (such as the Haber process).
They typically provide, in varying proportions, the three major plant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium: N-P-K), the secondary plant nutrients (calcium, sulfur, magnesium), and sometimes trace elements (or micronutrients) with a role in plant nutrition: boron, chlorine, manganese, iron, zinc, copper, and molybdenum.
Both organic and inorganic fertilizers were called "manures" derived from the French expression for manual tillage, but this term is now mostly restricted to organic manure.
Though nitrogen is plentiful in the earth's atmosphere, relatively few plants engage in nitrogen fixation (conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to a biologically useful form). Most plants thus require nitrogen compounds to be present in the soil in which they grow.

Arboriculture

Arboriculture is the cultivation of trees and shrubs. The discipline includes the study of how they grow and respond to cultural practices and the environment as well as aspects of cultivation such as selection, planting, care, and removal.
The purpose is generally to manage amenity trees. That is trees where their value to the landscape is greater than that of their wood content. Trees offer environmental benefits as well as cultural, heritage and habitat for fauna. The combined value including aesthetics exceeds the value of a trees worth from a forestry wood perspective. Amenity trees are usually in a garden or urban setting, and arboriculture is the management of them for plant health and longevity, pest and pathogen resistance, risk management and ornamental or aesthetic reasons. In this, it needs to be distinguished from forestry, which is the commercial production and use of timber and other forest products from plantations and forests. Some definitions of the term arboriculture extend it only to the care of trees. "Arboriculture" is not synonymous with Arborsculpture.