As I was writing a blog post to talk about what I'd learned of soils, I discovered that terms we use in the plant database aren't in the dictionary. People may struggle with terms like "mesic" and not be sure exactly what it means. If we don't define it, they will leave the site.

Both of those words are in my dictionary.

But if you are asking about why they are not in greater use here, let's face it, it is not a very common gardening practice.

If you hover your mouse over any of the Water Preferences in a database entry, it says exactly what mesic means. If you are a phone or tablet, simply highlight the word and a "look up" option pops up to go to the definition directly from an online dictionary.
Googling any term is easily accessible to anyone. These aren't made up mystery terms.

BigBill said:Both of those words are in my dictionary.

But if you are asking about why they are not in greater use here, let's face it, it is not a very common gardening practice.

I was referring to garden.org's Garden Dictionary under the Learning Library menu. "Mesic" isn't there, nor is "Xeriscaping," though "Xeriscape" is there.

Calif_Sue said:If you hover your mouse over any of the Water Preferences in a database entry, it says exactly what mesic means. If you are a phone or tablet, simply highlight the word and a "look up" option pops up to go to the definition directly from an online dictionary.
Googling any term is easily accessible to anyone. These aren't made up mystery terms.

I didn't know about the hover feature, thank you for pointing that out.

And I know googling is an option, it just seems an odd omission to have terms used frequently in the plant database that aren't in the on-line garden dictionary.

I seem to remember @jon was helping us add terms to the dictionary at some point, but I am unable to find the thread where that was taking place. If you can propose a definition for the words you want to add, that would help. My best suggestions:

mesic - moderate growing conditions, especially moisture

xeriscaping - landscaping or gardening with little or no irrigation

Yes! You can view our dictionary with over 15k words here: https://garden.org/nga/diction...

If you would like any added you can send me a tree-mail!