Ivydene Gardens: WELCOME
THE 2 EUREKA EFFECT PAGES FOR UNDERSTANDING SOIL AND HOW PLANTS INTERACT WITH IT OUT OF 15,000:-
Compare different flower colours per month for each plant type within its Plant Photo Gallery with :-
Click on Flower Colour in the Colour Wheel below to
Click on number between 1-7 from 12 Colour or 1-6 from Black Sections or Wild White to see all the plant flowers (1381 cultivated - with another 115 roses in the Rose Plants Gallery, another 270 bulbs in the Bulb Gallery, and 628 native to the UK wildflower) in this website with their:-
in one of the above 53 Flower Colour Wheel pages to create your colour coordinated flower schemes.
Each Plant Description can then be selected by clicking on the:-
Click on Flower Colour in the Colour Wheel below to
Inner circle of Grey is 12 months of Unusual or Multi-Coloured Flower Colour.
Click the number 1 to see all the plant flowers (1446 cultivated, 235 wildflower) in this website with their:-
in one of the above 144 Flower Colour Wheel pages to create Blue, Brown, Cream, Green, Mauve, Orange, Purple, Red, Pink, White, Yellow or Multicoloured (Grey circle in the middle) colour coordinated flower schemes in each month.
Click on Flower Colour in the Colour Wheel below to
For Hay Fever sufferers, it is better to have bee-pollinated plants than wind-pollinated plants, since the pollen spread by that wind is what causes their suffering. The plants in Bee Bloom Gallery are bee-pollinated and they should be used in preference to grasses.
Click on the OOO in the Bee-Pollinated Bloom Plant Index below to link to those bee-pollinated plants of that flower colour in that month or any of
Enumber indicates Empty Index Page.
Hard Landscaping Garden Design
Soft Landscaping Garden Design
You can select plants for your garden using the following hierarchy as further detailed in Plants:-
The Rock Garden Plant Index pages provide all the required information in a condensed form to aid your selection of (82) small rock garden plants for small areas - with the flower colour linking to the Rock Garden Plant Colour Wheel Page (click on number in colour of Rock Garden Colour Wheel Map below to transfer) to see which other rock garden plants are in that same colour.
This is a sad story about our native Monkey Orchid....
It is so sad, that she has to lie down, and...
Irrelevant material, with logo/Ivydene Horticultural Services Email Link and copyright is added at bottom of each page.
Currently (August 2016), I can receive but not send emails, so please provide phone number/country or full postal address if reply required.
...to prevent cows from eating our native orchid plants, we must put the orchids in chicken-wire cages:-
"The Green Tree of Love's Mystery"
"As well as producing oxygen for us to breathe, trees are for humans a place of refuge, source of building material and for me, a living testament to the bounteous beauties inherent in nature. In our fast-moving contemporary city life, I believe it is important to at least have pictures of trees around us to enrich our lives, since they are designed to make our environment healthier." from
Site design and content copyright ©April 2007. Page structure amended October 2012. Amended May 2015. Chris Garnons-Williams.
DISCLAIMER: Links to external sites are provided as a courtesy to visitors. Ivydene Horticultural Services are not responsible for the content and/or quality of external web sites linked from this site.
Explanation of Gallery Structure and its expansion capability of this educational non-income-generating-for-me website hobby :-
Each Plant Description Page may have the following photos in 150 x 150 pixel or larger pass-through graphics:-
then in each Comparison Page in 50 x 50 pixel pass-through graphics there will be:-
then in the Flower Colour per Month and the Colour Wheel Pages in 50 x 50 pixel pass-through graphics there will be:
This adds up to a fair number of photos.
It is worth reading and using the Comparison Menu like the following above the compared images to understand the image and the information in its text box below that image:-
Each Site Map Page is limited by the length of a displayed Page to about 400 web filenames, so with the Comparison Pages this limits the number of Plant Description Pages to about 330.
Because of this for example; the Site Map Page that you link to from the Main Menu on the top left for Bulb is the Gallery that contains all the Bulbs from the other Galleries in 1 of 6 Flower Colours in each of the Months that Bulb flowers in:-
These bulb names are in the Bulb Index Table on the right hand side in every page of that Gallery. This Bulb Index then links to the relevant Bulb Description Page in the relevant Gallery. As more plants are added to a Plant Type like Bulbs, then perhaps another new Gallery will be added to the expanded list and prefixed by ... in the Menu list.
For the Alpine Plants, there is only the following:-
Sub Menu to each Page of this Topic of the HOME PAGES, with normally a * after Page you are viewing.
READING THE TEXT IN RED ON THIS PAGE WILL MAKE IT EASIER FOR YOU TO USE EACH PAGE in my educational website.
when I do not have photos , then from March 2016, I am using my leisure time on creating the following Structure:-
I may not spend all my time that I use to execute these tasks to just 1 of them, but try rotating to the next every so often.
I hope that you find that the information in this website is useful to you:-
I like reading and that is shown by the index in my Library, where I provide lists of books to take you between designing, maintaining or building a garden and the hierarchy of books on plants taking you from
There are the systems for choosing plants as shown in
The First Book of Botany. Designed to cultivate The Observing Powers of Children by Eliza A. Youmans.
"This little book has a twofold claim upon those concerned in the work of education.
In the first place, it introduces the beginner to the study of Botany in the only way it can be properly done - by the direct observation of vegetable forms. The pupil is told very little, and from the beginning, thoughout, he is sent to the plant to get his knowledge of the plant. The book is designed to help him in this work, never to supersede it. Instead of memorizing the statements of others, he brings a report of the living reality as he sees it; it is the things themselves that are to be examined, questioned, and understood. The true basis of a knowledge of Botany is that familiarity with the actual characters of plants, which can only be obtained by direct and habitual inspection of them. The beginner should therefore commence with the actual specimens, and learn to distinguish those external characters which lie open to observation; the knowledge of which leads naturally to that arrangement by related attributes which constitutes classification.
But the present book has a still stronger claim to attention; it develops a new method of study which is designed to correct that which is confessedly the deepest defect of out current education. This defect is the almost total lack of any systematic cultivation of the observing powers. Although all real knowledge begins in attention at things, and consists in the discrimination and comparison of the likenesses and differences among objects; yet, strange to say, in our vaunted system of instruction there is no provision for the regular training of the perceptive faculties. That which should be first and fundamental is hardly attended to at all. We train in mathematics, and cram the contents of books, but do little to exercise the mind upon the realities of Nature, or to make it alert, sensitive, and intelligent, in respect to the order of the surrounding world.
Something, indeed, has been done in the way of object-teaching, although but little of that is satisfactory. These exercises are notoriously loose, desultory, incoherent, and superficial, and hardly deserve the name of mental training. What is wanted is, that object-studies shall become more close and methodic, and that the observations shall be wrought into connected and organized knowledge. It is the merit of Botany that, beyond all other studies, it is suited to the attainment of this end. Plants furnish abundant and ever-varying materials for observation. The elementary facts of Botany are so simple that their study can be commenced in early childhood, and so numerous as to sustain a prolonged course of observation. From the most rudimentarty facts the pupil may proceed gradually to the more complex; from the concrete to the abstract; from observation to the truths resting upon observation, in a natural order of ascent, as required by the laws of mental growth. The means are thus furnished for organizing object-teaching into a systematic method, so that it may be pursued continuously through a course of successively higher and more comprehensive exercises. Carried out in this way, Botany is capable of doing for the observing powers of the mind what mathematics does for its reasoning powers.
Moreover, accuracy of observation requires accuracy of description; precision of thought implies precision in the use of language. Here, again, Botany has superior advantages. Its vocabulary is more copious, precise, and well settled, than that of any other of the natural sciences; it is thus unrivalled in the scope it offers for the cultivation of the descriptive powers.
On purely mental grounds, therefore, and as a means of attaining the most needed of educational reforms, Botany has a claim to be admitted as a fourth fundamental branch of common-school study; and the hope of contributing something to this end has been the author's main incitement in the preparation of this rudimentary work.
It is needful here to state that the method of instruction developed in these pages is no mere educational novelty; it has been tested, and its fitness for the end proposed has been shown in practice. The schedule feature which is here fully brought out, and which is its leading peculiarity as a mode of study, was devised and successfully used by Professor J.S. Henslow, of Cambridge, England. My attention was first drawn to it as I was looking about in the educational department of the South Kensington Museum, in London. In a show-case of botanical specimens, I noticed some slates covered with childish writing, which proved to be illustrations of a method of teaching Botany to the young. They were furnished by Professor Henslow for the International Exhibition of 1851. He died without publishing his method, but not without having subjected it to thorough practical trial. He had gathered together a class of poor country children, in the parish where he officiated as clergyman, and taught them Botany by a plan similar to the present, though less simplified. The results of this experiment have been given to the public by Dr J. D. Hooker, Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens at Kew, who was summoned to give evidence upon the subject before a Parliamentary Commission on Education.
The following interesting passages from his testimony will give an idea of Professor Henslow's methods of proceeding and its results:
Question. Have you ever turned your attention at all to the possibilty of teaching Botany to boys in classes at school?
Answer. I have thought that it might be done very easily; that this deficiency might be easily remedied.
Q. What are your ideas on the subject?
A. My own ideas are chiefly drawn from the experience of my father-in-law, the late Professor Henslow, Professor of Botany at Cambridge. He introduced Botany into one of the lowest possible class of schools - that of village laborers' children in a remote part of Suffolk.
Q. Perhaps you will have the goodness to tell us the system he pursued?
A. It was an entirely voluntary system. He offered to enroll the school children in a class to be taught Botany once a week. The number of children in the class was limited, I think, to 42. As his parish contained only 1000 inhabitants, there never were, I suppose, the full 42 children in their class; their ages ranged from about 8 years old to about 14 or 15. The class mostly consisted of girls... He required that, before they were enrolled in the class, they should be able to spell a few elementary botanical terms, including some of the most difficult to spell, and those that were the most essential to begin with. Those who brought proof that they could do this were put into the third class; then they were taught once a week, by himself generally, for an hour or an hour and a half, sometimes for 2 hours (for they were exceedingly fond of it).
Q. Did he use to take them out in the country, or was it simply lessons in school?
A. He left them to collect for themselves; but he visited his parish daily, when the children used to come up to him, and bring the plants they had collected; so that the lessons went on all the week round. There was only 1 day in the week on which definite instruction was given to the class; but on Sunday afternoon he used to allow the senior class, and those who got marks at the examinations, to attend at his house...
Q. Did he find any difficulty in teaching this subject in class?
A. None whatever; less than he would have had in dealing with almost any other subject.
Q. Do you know in what way he taught it? did he illustrate it?
A. Invariably; he made it practical. He made it an objective study. The children were taught to know the plants, and to pull them to pieces; to give their proper names to the parts; to indicate the relations of the parts to one another; and to find out the relation of one plant to another by the knowledge thus obtained.
Q. They were children, you say, generally from 8 to 12?
A. and up to 14.
Q. and they learned it readily?
A. Readily and voluntarily, entirely.
Q. and were interested in it?
A. Extremely interested in it. They were exceedingly fond of it.
Q. Do you happen to know whether Professor Henslow thought that the study of Botany developed the faculties of the mind - that it taught these children to think? and do you know whether he perceived any improvement in their mental faculties from that?
A. Yes; he used to think it was the most important agent that could be employed for cultivating their faculties of observation, and for strengthening their reasoning powers.
Q. He really thought that he had arrived at a practical result?
A. Undoubtedly; and so did every one who visited the school or the parish.
Q. They were children of quite the lower class?
A. The laboring agricultural class.
Q. and in other branches receiving the most elementary instruction?
Q. And Professor Henslow thought that their minds were more developed; that they were become more reasoning beings, from having this study super-added to the others?
A. Most decidely. It was also the opinion of some of the inspectors of schools, who came to visit him, that such children were in general more intelligent than those of other parishes; and they attribute the difference to their observant and reasoning faculties being thus developed...
Q. So that the intellectual success of this objective study was beyond question?
A. Beyond question....In conducting the examinations of medical men for the army, which I have now conducted for several years, and those for the East-India Company's Service, which I have conducted for, I think, 7 years, the questions which I am the habit of putting, and which are NOT answered by the majority of candidates, are what would have been answered by the children in Professor Henslow's village-school. I believe the chief reason to be, that these students' observing faculties, as children, had never been trained - such faculties having lain dormant with those who naturally possessed them in a high degree; and having never been developed, by training, in those who possessed them in a low degree. In most medical schools, the whole sum and substance of botanical science is crammed into a few weeks of lectures, and the men leave the class without having acquired an accurate knowledge of the merest elements of the science....
The printed form or schedule contrived by Professor Henslow, and used in these classes, applied only to the flower, the most complex part of the plant, and the attention of children was directed by it chiefly to those features upon which orders depend in classification. But, instead of confining its use to the study of a special part of plant-structure, it seemed to me to apply equally to the whole course of descriptive Botany, and to be capable of becoming a most efficient instrument of regular observational training. I accordingly prepared a simplified series of exercises on this plan, and used them to guide some little children in studying the plants of the neighborhood; and, had this experiment not been regarded, by those who witnessed it, as a success, the book embodying these exercises would not now appear.
The successful experience here referred to, which led to the publication of this book, has now been decisely confirmed by the public after a year's trial with it. It has had an extensive sale, has been introduced into many schools of all grades, has been much used by private students, and has been approved with a unanimity and earnestness quite unprecedented in the history of school-books based upon new methods of teaching.
A new edition now appears, with several additional chapters treating of the seed, germination, buds, the aspects of woody plants, etc. The descriptions will here be more full and general, but the plan of describing only the results of actual observations is still adhered to. Questions are asked, but no answers are given; these are to be got by direct inspection of the objects. Some simple experiments for the cildren to make are introduced, and they will now be more occupied in watching the changes which take place in the different parts of plants.
In arranging a course of observations for beginners in Botany, only those have been selected which may be made with the naked eye. In another book now in preparation the same plan of schedule study will be carried out, and provision made for more close and extended observations, requiring the help of magifying-glasses.
There have been attempts to teach classes by the schedule method of this work by means of the blackboard, and without the book, but all such attempts are volations of the method. Botany cannot be "taught" by this system, for the very essence and soul of it is that the pupil is himself to find out what he wants to know. For repetition, comparison, and verification, constant reference to past exercises is required, which makes it indispensable that plant and book should go together. Only as a manual of practice, in individual observation, can the present work subserve the purpose for which it was prepared.
Suggestions to Teachers.
The method to be pursued by the aid of this book is the following: The child, whether at home or at school, first of all collects some specimens of plants - almost any will answer the purpose in commencing. These consist of organs, each of which is made up of different parts, and these vary in form and structure continually in different species. The object of the learner is to find out these parts or characters, and to learn their names, so as to be able to describe them.
The beginner, of course, must start with the simplest characters. Turning to the first exercises, for example, he finds the parts of leaves represented by pictures accompanied by the names applied to them. Guided by these, he refers to his specimens, and finds the real things which the pictures and the words represent. When a few characters are fixed in the mind by 2 or 3 exercises, he will commence the practice of noting down what he observes. For this purpose a form, or schedule, is used, containing questions which indicate what he is to search for. Models of these schedules, filled out, are given in the successive exercises: the pupil will make them for himself with pencil and paper (see Note below). He now carefully observes his specimen, and writes down the characters it possesses, with which he has thus far become acquainted. Having done this, he pins the specimen to the paper describing it, and brings it to the teacher as the report of his observation and judgement in the case.
This operation is constantly repeated upon varying forms, and slowly extended by the addition of new characters. He then goes on discovering new parts and acquiring their names - noting the variations of those parts and the names of their variations. The schedules guide him forward in the right direction, and hold him steadily to the essential work of excersising his faculties upon the living objects before him. In every fresh collection of plants, new plants and new relations will solicit the attention, and will have to be observed, compared, and recorded. Particular kinds of plants, let it be remembered, are not described in the book - they are not even named; the object is, by constant practice and repetition, to train the pupil to find out the characters of any that come in his way, and make his own descriptions.
An aquaintance with Botany, although of course desirable, is not indispensable in using these exercises. Any teacher or parent who is willing to take the necessary pains can conduct the children through them without difficulty; and if they will become fellow-students with them all the better. The child is not so much to be taught, as to instruct himself. The very essence of the plan is, that he is to make his own way, and rely on nobody else; it is intended for self-development. Mistakes will, of course, be made; but the whole method is self-correcting, and the pupil, as he goes forward, will be constantly rectifying his past errors. The object is less to get perfect results at first than to get the pupil's opinion upon the basis of his own observations.
Children can begin to study plants successfully by this method at 6 or 7 years of age, or as soon as they can write. But close observations should not be required from young beginners, nor the exercises be prolonged to weariness. The transition from the unconcious and spontaneous observations of children to conscious observation with a definite purpose should be gradual, beginning and continuing for some time with the easiest exercises upon the most simple and obvious characters.
Chapter I. - THE LEAF
Ex. 1. The parts of a Leaf
Ex. 2. The parts of a Grass-Leaf
Ex. 3. Venation
Ex. 4. The framework and its Parts
Ex. 5. Feather-veined and Palmate-veined Leaves
Ex. 6. Margins
Ex. 7. Bases
Ex. 9. Forms of Lobes
Ex. 10. Forms of Sinuses
Ex. 11. Kinds of Leaves
Ex. 12. Shapes of Leaves
Ex. 13. Petioles, Surfaces, and Colors
Ex. 14. Simple and Compound Leaves
Ex. 15. Parts of Compound Leaves
Ex. 16. Pinnate and Digitate Leaves
Ex. 17. Varieties of Pinnate Leaves
Ex. 18. Varieties of Digitate Leaves
Ex. 19. Forms of Stipules
Ex. 20. Examples of Description
Chapter II. - THE STEM
Chapter III. - THE INFLORESCENCE
Chapter IV. - THE FLOWER
Chapter V. - THE ROOT
EXAMPLES IN PLANT DESCRIPTION
Chapter VI. - THE SEED
Chapter VII. - WOODY PLANTS
Chapter VIII. - THE LEAF-BUD
Chapter IX. - STEM AND ROOT
Chapter X. - FRUIT
Chapter XI. - THE ACTIONS OF PLANTS
The ethos of the above book is what students at Universtity should do instead of taking down what is written on a blackboard, rote-learning it and spewing it forth at the exams ( which was what I had to do at the end of a year studying Polymer Chemistry at university, so I changed my study to Psychology and then earned my degree).
At University they should be taught:-
After I had my degree in Psycholgy, as part of my job as a Laboratory Technician, I taught Computer Science to Architecture students during 6 hours of lectures. They learnt Computer Hardware, Computer Software, Flowcharting, Documentation and the Fortran language using my type written notes for each lecture and a copy of them was shown to them on transparency film for an overhead projector. The next lecture notes were given to them at the end of the previous weekly 1 hour lecture. After all the lectures, I then split them into teams and during 2 afternoons they had to produce a statistical program analyzing 1 of their lab experiments, as well as document, flowchart and run it to get their answers.
In order to live with my fiancee and then wife, I moved location and job to become a software engineer in military avionics. I wrote machine code and documentation over 14 years for many different computers:-
The above jobs demontrate that at University you should learn to think to solve a situation after you leave; and it does not matter if you never use the information that you absorbed at University on that course.
Main Menu to Site Map of each of the Topics, with a * after Topic you are viewing.
Colour Wheels with photo thumbnails in different colours
Colour Wheels without photo thumbnails, but with links to photos
Garden Style Index
Expanded Main Menu of links to the Site Map Page to show the sub-gallery-structure of some of the above Topics
Topic - Wildlife on Plant Photo Gallery
There are 180 families in the Wildflowers of the UK and they have been split up into 22 Galleries to allow space for up to 100 plants per gallery.
The Site Map Page that you link to from the Menu in the above row for the Wildflower Gallery contains all the native UK plants which have their Plant Description Pages in the other 22 Wildflower Galleries. It also has Wildflower Index Pages, Flower Colour Comparison Pages and links to the 180 Wildflower Family Pages as shown in the menu above.
Links to external websites like the link to "the Man walking in front of car to warn pedestrians of a horseless vehicle approaching" would be correct when I inserted it after March 2007, but it is possible that those horseless vehicles may now exceed the walking pace of that man and thus that link will currently be br
My advice is Google the name on the link and see if you can find the new link. If you sent me an email after clicking Ivydene Horticultural Services text under the Worm Logo on any page, then; as the first after March 2010 you would be the third emailer since 2007, I could then change that link in that 1 of the 15,743 pages. Currently (August 2016), I can receive but not send emails, so please provide phone number/country or full postal address if reply required.