Gardening vs Landscaping: Difference and Comparison

Everyone likes greenery. Eye-soothing gardens are enough to make you smile. But when the question of appearance and design comes in, we get two words, gardening and landscaping.

While gardening is the simple process of cultivating, landscaping is a much broader term and is more concerned with the beautification of the garden. 

Key Takeaways

1. Gardening focuses on cultivating plants, flowers, and vegetables, while landscaping involves designing and organizing outdoor spaces.
2. Landscaping encompasses a broader range of tasks, including hardscaping, lighting, and irrigation, whereas gardening is limited to plant care and maintenance.
3. Gardening can be considered a subset of landscaping, but not all projects involve gardening.

Gardening vs Landscaping

Gardening refers to cultivating plants, such as flowers, vegetables, and herbs, in outdoor spaces. This includes creating and maintaining flower beds, vegetable and herb gardens. Landscaping refers to designing and building outdoor spaces that are both functional and visually appealing. This can include activities such as planning and designing the layout of outdoor spaces.

Gardening is a simple activity that many people undertake for pleasure. It gets treated as a hobby and can be done quickly without a vast land space or fancy instruments.

Gardening can include flowers, fruits and vegetable trees according to the availability of the space.

Landscaping is not a simple thing. It requires a vast knowledge in the area of cultivation and horticulture. Not anyone can plan this.

It requires professional help. To do landscaping, one also needs a huge space to fit all the preferences.

Comparison Table

Parameters of Comparison	Gardening	Landscaping
Definition	Gardening is an activity that includes cultivating and growing a garden.	Landscaping is an activity to beautify a garden with more ornamental entities.
Done by	Anyone can do gardening.	Generally, professionals are hired for landscaping.
Design	It does not have a fixed design. It is grown according to the gardener’s wish.	It is a more planned and designed way of gardening.
Types of plants	It mainly involves growing plants of flowers, fruits and simple vegetables.	It mainly includes plants, trees and even shrubs and many other decorative items.
Structure	The structure of the garden depends on the shape of the land.	In landscaping, the structure and the terrain of the garden get changed.

What is Gardening?

Gardening is the activity or process many people undertake to cultivate several plants. In gardening, one can grow different types of plants, such as flowers, fruits and trees.

Sometimes they are beautified with some decorative plants. This adds an overall aesthetic charm to the garden. 

Gardening does not require much space. People can even do this on their balconies.

One can also do gardening in yards, terraces, rooftops or pots. It is not necessary to do gardening only in a traditional garden space.

Indoor gardening is a phenomenon as well. Many people keep plants inside the house and take care of them.

Gardening is a relaxing process that is also considered to be a hobby. Many people pursue this activity in their free time to have a stress-free, calm attitude.

Even research shows that gardening has several positive effects on our mental health. This recreational activity also has a beneficial impact on physical health.

What is Landscaping?

This process includes changing the former structure and designs.

A new layout gets made, and then in the garden, the plan gets executed. 

Besides trees and plants, many other elements get used to increase the attraction of these places. Things that are not a part of a traditional garden find their place in the landscaping.

For this purpose, the changes in the structure take place.

Several processes, such as backfilling, mounding, terracing, and grading, are undertaken to carry out changes.

In most cases, all the planning is done by professional people who can effectively change the view without compromising aesthetic understanding.

Besides additions, many eliminations take place as well. Unnecessary walls, fences or decks can get removed during the process.

Landscaping is done by professionals while considering the owner’s requirements and choices. Some might ask for a sustainable landscape, while others may want striking designs to match their taste.

Any design can be embodied through landscaping.

However, it is no way that landscaping can happen without the right technology and methods. Proper landscaping includes science as well as arts.

This is why a landscaping professional is required for the job, which has a well-informed team on basic landscaping rules, horticultural, greenhouse and other related cases.

Main Differences Between Gardening and Landscaping

1. Gardening is an activity that includes cultivating and growing different plants. On the other hand, landscaping is beautifying a garden with more ornamental entities.
2. Anyone with a knack for growing plants can start gardening, but landscaping is done only by professionals, which needs proper planning and implementation.
3. Gardening does not need to have any set design or size. It can be designed as the choice of the gardeners, while landscaping requires proper planning and changes. Many ornamental features get included here.
4. Gardening mainly involves growing plants of flowers, fruits and simple vegetables, but landscaping includes plants, trees and even shrubs and other decorative elements. 
5. The garden’s structure depends on the shape of the land, whereas, in landscaping, things change and modify.

References

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11252-014-0379-7
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1360138508000253