Horticuture Defined

The term Horticulture has many meanings to many people.  This definition is one that covers it most accurately.

HORTICULTURE is a broad inclusive term covering the making and care of home gardens, market-gardens, orchards, nurseries, greenhouses, as well as the plant-raising phase of parks, estates and botanic gardens.  It comprises whatever has to do with the growing of ornamentals, of vegetables, of fruits, and of plants prized for their general interest.  It may constitute the way of earning a living and developing a business at the same moment that in the fuller sense its subjects are embedded in the emotional assets of life.
It follows that horticulture cannot be measured or defined by its organized and commercial aspects alone or its importance be represented in statistics.  The amateur and personal practice of it determine the extent of the trade development: and this fact will be increasingly apparent as home-making rises to higher satisfactions.
The main departments of horticulture as defined by the plant subjects, are pomology or fruit-growing, floriculture or flower-growing, olericulture or vegetable-growing, landscape practice.
To grow the vast range of plants successfully and to defend them against insect and disease requires experience and definite knowledge.  The plant resources of the earth are largely within the purview of the horticulturist, involving conceptions of plant geography, climate, adaptations.  These resources afford endless opportunities in plant-breeding.  It follows that the exact identification of a species and varieties is an indispensable part of this field of knowledge.  Horticultural subjects have been put into pedagogical form and are now effective means of elementary and higher education.  Personal skill in cultivation and in techniques is essential to success and real satisfactions; yet horticulture and gardening are much more than the growing of plants. See Garden

from

HORTUS SECOND
A Concise Dictionary of Gardening and General Horticulture
compiled by L. H. Bailey and Ethel Zoe Bailey