If you're new to gardening, you're probably still working on a few basics. You can tell a pansy from a petunia, but you still haven't quite figured out what the three numbers on the side of a bag of fertilizer stand for, or what mulch is, or what exactly people mean when they say they have been deadheading. What you could use is a basic primer in the language of gardening, a quick guide to rudimentary garden terms like biennial and bare-root, cultivar and carpet bedding, humus and hybrids, pollarding and pricking out. So here's an easy A-to-Z of basic terms.

A Acid soil: Perfect soil for rhododendrons, azaleas, heathers and hydrangeas -- has a pH of less than 6.5 and turns litmus paper red. Also see pH. Aeration: A way of getting air to grass roots by by poking holes into the ground. Essential for great lawns. Alkaline soil: The opposite of acidic soil, this chalky soil has pH of more than 7.5 and turns litmus paper blue.

Annual: Hardy and half-hardy annuals are plants that complete their life cycle in a single season, going from seed to flower or fruit before dying. B Bare-root: A plant that has been dug up and packaged without soil around its roots. Mail orders from nurseries are mostly dispatched bare-root. Bedding plants: Mostly annuals (although can include biennials) that are ``bedded out'' in spring to provide summer colour.

Biennial: Plants that complete their life cycle in two seasons, starting from seed and establishing leaves and a stem in the first year and flowering the following year. Examples: Foxgloves, wallflowers, canterbury bells.  C Cambium: The green layer of living tissue just below the woody surface of a branch. A sign that your plant is still alive. Compost: Dark, blackish humus formed from the decomposition of organic matter. Can be used to enrich soil or as a mulch.

Cultivar: Short for 'cultivated variety,' this refers to a plant produced through hybridization, rather than found in nature. Carpet bedding: A style of planting, popular with the early Victorians, involving the tight planting of annuals to create intricate floral patterns. D Deadhead: Removal of faded flowers in order to: 1) maintain tidy appearance of the garden; 2) promote flower production

by preventing the plant developing seeds; and 3) in some cases, such as with delphiniums and lupins, to induce a second flush of flowers later in the season.    Die-back: The dead part of a shoot or branch that has been incorrectly pruned. Division: What you do to perennials every three or four years when they have grown big enough to be split into more plants. Division is usually done in spring or fall. Dormant: Winter sleep for plants. Technically, it means there is little or no cellular activity.

It's something plants do to survive winter and save energy for the new season.   Drip line: Area around a tree where the tips of roots are located, usually where water drips from the canopy of leaves. E Espalier: The art of training a tree into a variety of shapes or patterns. Perfected by French gardeners, espaliering is one way of training a tree (or shrub) to lie flat against a wall or trellis in a symmetrical pattern.

A popular espalier design is called the Belgian fence. F Forcing: Getting plants to flower out of season by manipulating temperature, humidity and light. Fastigiate: A plant with a column-like shape to it. Frost pocket: An area of the garden where cold air gets trapped during winter. Only the tougher, more hardy plants can survive in frost pockets.

G Genus: The family name for a group of plants related to one another. It is the first word in a plant's proper name: Lonicera, Fuchsia, Cotoneaster, for example. A plant has three names: genus (first), species (second), cultivar or variety (third) as in Acer campestre `Postelense'. Grafting: Propagating by taking the stem or bud of one plant and joining it to the root or stem of another.

H Hardening off: Gradually acclimatizing a plant to being out of the warmth of the greenhouse in order to get it ready for planting into the garden. Hardiness: Measure of a plant's ability to withstand extremes of cold and frost or harsh conditions. Also see Zones. Heading back: Pruning back the main branches of a tree or shrub by a third to half. CONTINUE