Gardening Word Search

Garden tools, the jobs they do and the vegetables they grow, to print with a key or solve on screen.

Name Date

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

WANONIDALAOQGUD

AESRIDHTOMATOIE

TDHYAMARCDIGMRS

EEDOEUQOPRUNELP

RNRDSOLWSWQGKNO

ICASRUOEEENIHHT

NAKETACLHINOYAA

GREENHOUSETRORT

CRDDVEMWTWVHUVO

AONLDGPWXGEHOEE

NTDIYIOMPEALMSM

LAWNHOSETEZGUTP

CEOGSITNIRWOLBR

IRCEWAKZABIYCII

TEDOSMWPVNIFHSR

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

TrowelTROWEL
HoeHOE
RakeRAKE
Watering CanWATERING CAN
HoseHOSE
DigDIG
PrunePRUNE
HarvestHARVEST
TomatoTOMATO
CarrotCARROT
PotatoPOTATO
CompostCOMPOST
MulchMULCH
GreenhouseGREENHOUSE
LawnLAWN
SeedlingSEEDLING

16 of 22 words from the Gardening Favorites list.

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Word list

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Answer key: Gardening Word Search

WANONIDALAOQGUD

AESRIDHTOMATOIE

TDHYAMARCDIGMRS

EEDOEUQOPRUNELP

RNRDSOLWSWQGKNO

ICASRUOEEENIHHT

NAKETACLHINOYAA

GREENHOUSETRORT

CRDDVEMWTWVHUVO

AONLDGPWXGEHOEE

NTDIYIOMPEALMSM

LAWNHOSETEZGUTP

CEOGSITNIRWOLBR

IRCEWAKZABIYCII

TEDOSMWPVNIFHSR

TROWEL, HOE, RAKE, WATERING CAN, HOSE, DIG, PRUNE, HARVEST, TOMATO, CARROT, POTATO, COMPOST, MULCH, GREENHOUSE, LAWN, SEEDLING

Next step Make a puzzle from what grows in your garden Scramble the same gardening words

All 106 words

Garden Tools 19

Cultivator A tool whose teeth break into the soil when it is dragged along.
Dibber A pointed stick of wood that makes the holes for planting seeds, seedlings or small bulbs.
Flowerpot A container in which plants are grown and displayed, historically made of plain terracotta.
Garden Fork A digging tool with a handle and several short, sturdy tines, usually four.
Gloves Coverings for the hands and fingers, worn for protection.
Hoe An ancient hand tool for shaping soil, clearing weeds and lifting root crops.
Hose A flexible tube used to carry water.
Loppers Long-handled scissors for cutting twigs and small branches.
Mower A machine with one or more revolving blades that cuts grass to an even height.
Rake A toothed bar fixed across a handle, a kind of broom for outside use.
Secateurs The British name for hand pruners, scissors strong enough to cut hard branches of trees and shrubs.
Spade A digging tool with a long handle and a blade that is typically narrower and flatter than a shovel's.
Stake A long, slender piece of wood, pointed at one end and driven into the ground as a support.
Tiller A machine that breaks up the soil.
Trowel A small hand tool used for digging and for moving small amounts of material.
Trug A wooden basket; the Sussex kind has a handle and rim of sweet chestnut and a body of thin willow boards.
Twine A strong, light string made of two or more thinner strands twisted together.
Watering Can A container with a handle that is carried to plants to wet them by hand; the tool dates back to at least A.D. 79.
Wheelbarrow A small load-carrying vehicle, usually with just one wheel, pushed by one person holding two handles.

Show all 106 words (87 more)

Garden Tasks 15

Cultivate To grow plants, or to break up the soil to prepare it for them.
Deadhead To remove the spent flowers from an ornamental plant.
Dig To remove soil, sand or rock from the ground with a tool or the hands.
Feed To supply plants with nutrients, as when fertilizer is applied.
Germinate To begin to grow from a seed or a spore; to sprout.
Graft To join tissues of two plants so that they keep growing together.
Harvest To gather a crop when it is mature.
Propagate To grow new plants from seeds, cuttings or other plant parts.
Prune To cut chosen branches, buds or roots off a plant.
Repot To move a growing plant into a larger container.
Sow To plant seeds.
Thinning Taking some plants out of a row so that the ones left have room to grow.
Transplant To move a plant from one place to another, often from a greenhouse out into the ground.
Water To pour onto the soil around plants the liquid they need.
Weeding Removing unwanted plants so that they do not compete with the ones being grown.

Vegetables and Herbs to Grow 22

Arugula An edible annual plant of the family Brassicaceae, also known as rocket.
Bell Pepper The fruit of a Capsicum plant, also known as a capsicum; cultivars produce fruits in different colors.
Bok Choy A type of Chinese cabbage grown as a leaf vegetable, called pak choi in British English.
Broccoli A green plant of the cabbage family whose large flowering head and stalk are eaten.
Carrot A root vegetable, typically orange because of the beta-carotene it holds.
Celery A plant of the family Apiaceae, eaten as a vegetable since ancient times.
Chard A green leafy vegetable, also called silver beet, of the same species as beetroot.
Cucumber A creeping vine whose fruits, cylinder-shaped to round, are used as vegetables.
Garlic A bulb-forming plant closely related to the onion, shallot, leek and chives.
Green Bean The young, unripe fruit of the plant Phaseolus vulgaris; most modern varieties are stringless.
Kale A vegetable also called leaf cabbage, grown mainly for its edible leaves.
Kohlrabi A low, stout vegetable bred from wild cabbage, also called German turnip.
Leek A vegetable whose edible part is a bundle of leaf sheaths, sometimes loosely called a stem or stalk.
Lettuce An annual plant mostly grown as a leaf vegetable and most often eaten raw in green salads.
Oregano A flowering plant of the mint family, native to the Mediterranean region, sometimes called wild marjoram.
Potato A starchy vegetable native to the Americas; the part that is eaten is an underground stem tuber.
Rosemary A shrub of the mint family with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves.
Shallot A kind of onion; until 2010 botanists classed it as a species of its own.
Spinach A leafy green plant native to Central and Western Asia.
Sweet Corn A variety of maize with a relatively high sugar content, grown for people to eat.
Tomato A plant of the nightshade family; its fruit is a berry that people eat as a vegetable.
Zucchini A summer squash, known as a courgette in France and Britain.

Soil and Compost 13

Clay A fine-grained natural earth material; its grains are smaller than those of silt.
Compost A mixture made by decomposing plant and food waste, used to fertilize plants and improve the ground.
Drainage The natural or artificial removal of excess water from an area.
Fertilizer Any natural or synthetic material applied to the ground or to plants to supply nutrients.
Humus The stable organic matter in the ground, formed as plant and animal substances decompose.
Leaf Mold Compost made from the fallen leaves of shrubs and trees, broken down mainly by fungi.
Loam Soil made mostly of sand and silt, with a smaller amount of clay.
Manure Organic matter, mostly animal droppings, that is used as fertilizer on the land.
Mulch A layer of material spread over the surface of the ground to keep in moisture and reduce weeds.
Nitrogen A chemical element with the symbol N and the atomic number 7.
Peat A build-up of partly decayed vegetation, found in bogs and similar places.
Silt Granular material with grains between sand and clay in size, usually with a floury feel.
Soil The mix of minerals, organic matter, water, gases and living things in which plants grow.

Around the Garden 14

Allotment A plot of land made available to one person for growing food plants, not for sale.
Arbor A shady sitting place in a garden, surrounded by climbing plants.
Cloche A cover that protects a plant from low temperatures; the word is French for bell, the shape of the first glass ones.
Cold Frame A low enclosure with a transparent roof that lets in sunlight and shelters plants from harsh weather.
Greenhouse A structure built to control the temperature and humidity inside it for growing plants.
Lawn An area of grass that is kept short with a mower.
Nursery A place that propagates plants and grows them on to the size wanted.
Path A way for people to walk along.
Pergola A garden feature of posts that hold up crossbeams and an open lattice, making a shaded walk or sitting area.
Plot A piece of land used for planting.
Raised Bed Soil built up above the level of the ground, usually inside a frame of wood, rock or concrete.
Shed A simple roofed structure, often used for storage or as a workshop.
Trellis An open framework or lattice of wood, bamboo or metal, made to support climbing plants.
Window Box A container for live flowers or herbs, fixed on or just below a sill.

Horticulture Words 23

Annual A plant that lives its whole life, from germination to seed, in one growing season and then dies.
Arboriculture The growing, care and study of individual trees, shrubs and vines.
Biennial A flowering plant that takes two years to complete its life cycle.
Bolting The growth of a flowering stem on a crop before it is harvested, as the plant tries to make seed.
Botany The branch of biology that studies plants, also called plant science.
Cultivar A cultivated plant chosen by people for its traits, which it keeps when it is propagated.
Cutting A piece of a stem or root that is placed in moist soil to grow into a new plant.
Espalier The practice of pruning and tying the branches of a woody plant to a frame, to shape it for fruit.
Floriculture The study of producing plants with showy, colorful flowers and foliage.
Heirloom An old cultivar of a food plant that is kept going by gardeners and farmers.
Horticulture The art and science of growing flowers, fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants.
Hybrid The offspring of two different varieties, subspecies, species or genera.
Hydroponics Growing plants without soil, in water that carries mineral nutrients.
Olericulture The science of vegetable growing.
Perennial A plant that lives for more than two years.
Pollinator An animal that carries pollen from the male part of one flower to the female part of a flower.
Pomology The study of fruits and how to grow them, a branch of botany.
Rhizome A plant stem that grows underground and puts out roots and shoots from its nodes.
Rootstock The plant with an established root system onto which a bud or cutting of another plant is grafted.
Seedling A young plant developing from the embryo of a seed, after germination.
Taproot A large, central root that grows straight down, from which other roots sprout sideways.
Topiary The practice of clipping trees and shrubs into clearly defined shapes, geometric or fanciful.
Tuber An enlarged structure, formed from a stem or a root, in which a plant stores nutrients.

How this list was compiled: 106 gardening words in six lists: tools, tasks, vegetables and herbs, soil and compost, places around the garden, and horticulture words. Facts in the clues were checked on October 9, 2026 against each word's English Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0); spellings and plain meanings against English Wiktionary. Licence: own work

How it works

This gardening word search opens on 16 words: Trowel, Hoe, Rake and Watering Can from the shed, Prune and Harvest from the jobs, Compost, Mulch and Seedling. Behind that grid are 106 words in six lists, from tools to horticulture.

Read the full guide

Tools, tasks and vegetables

Garden Tools has 19 words, from Trowel and Spade to Dibber, Secateurs and Trug. Garden Tasks has 15, such as Sow, Prune, Transplant and Deadhead. Vegetables and Herbs to Grow has 22, from Tomato and Carrot to Kohlrabi and Bok Choy. Soil and Compost has 13 and Around the Garden 14.

A horticulture word search printable for older classes

Horticulture Words has 23 terms: Annual, Biennial and Perennial; Cultivar, Hybrid and Heirloom; Tuber and Rhizome; and four long names for kinds of growing, Pomology, Floriculture, Olericulture and Arboriculture. Hard Gardening holds the 43 longest words on the page, Hydroponics and Olericulture among them.

Easy Gardening has 31 words of 3 to 5 letters, such as Dig, Sow, Hoe, Rake and Soil.
Show clues, not words, a tick box in More options, prints Hose as "A flexible tube used to carry water."

Questions and answers

Is this a free printable gardening word search?

Yes, free. The puzzle fills one sheet of Letter or A4, and the answer key, with every word ringed, prints on the sheet that follows.

What is horticulture?

The science and art of growing ornamental plants, flowers, fruits and vegetables. Pomology studies fruits, olericulture is the science of vegetable growing, floriculture deals with flowers and foliage, and arboriculture with trees, shrubs and vines.

What is the difference between an annual and a perennial?

An annual completes its life cycle, from germination to seed, within one growing season and then dies. A perennial lives for more than two years. A biennial, in between, takes two years to finish its life cycle.

What is the difference between a spade and a shovel?

A spade is mainly a digging tool: a long handle and a blade that is typically narrower and flatter than a shovel's. Spade is in Garden Tools; Shovel is hidden in the flower word search.

All 106 words

Garden Tools 19

Garden Tasks 15

Vegetables and Herbs to Grow 22

Soil and Compost 13

Around the Garden 14

Horticulture Words 23

How it works

Tools, tasks and vegetables

A horticulture word search printable for older classes

Questions and answers

More tools