Gardening trivia questions for a garden club or a seed swap, in four rounds: gardens of the ancient world, garden styles and their makers, the vegetable garden, and houseplants.
Read the full guide
Vegetable garden trivia questions
The vegetable garden asks the French and Scots names for a kitchen garden, what hügelkultur means, which part of the plant broccoli is and where the word vegetable comes from.
Houseplants trivia questions and answers
Houseplants has the Victorian fern case and the accident that brought orchids to Europe. The other two rounds are horticulture trivia questions and answers from history: Persia, Rome, China and Japan, then Versailles and the English landscape garden.
Tips
Garden styles and their makers suits a table that visits gardens.
Questions and answers
What are some easy garden trivia questions?
Which French word is another name for a kitchen garden? What is another name for a houseplant? Which part of the plant is broccoli? The answers are potager, a potted plant and the flower.
Is this gardening advice?
No. The questions are history, words and facts about gardens. Nothing here tells you how to grow, prune, feed or treat a plant.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article linked under it: History of gardening, Garden, Gardening, Kitchen garden, Vegetable or Houseplant. Sales figures and health claims for plants are left out.
About when did people probably begin to enclose outdoor space?Answer: Around 10,000 BC. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
According to the first chronicle of Japan, what did the Emperor Keikō put into a pond and enjoy watching morning and evening?Answer: A few carp. Source: Wikipedia: Garden
The botanist Theophrastus is said to have inherited a garden from which philosopher?Answer: Aristotle. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
The earliest recorded Chinese gardens were made in the valley of which river?Answer: The Yellow River. Source: Wikipedia: Garden
Egyptian tomb paintings of about 1500 BC show lotus ponds ringed by rows of which trees?Answer: Acacias and palms. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
Persian gardens could be watered by a tunnel that carries water from an aquifer. What is it called?Answer: A qanat. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
Which Assyrian king built a palace garden with a water system that ran 50 km into the hills?Answer: Sennacherib. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
Which Egyptian queen grew frankincense in her temple in 1478 BC?Answer: Hatshepsut. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
Which Persian king was said to have had a "paradise garden"?Answer: Darius the Great. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
Who built the first private garden estate of Rome?Answer: Gaius Maecenas. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
Garden styles and their makers 12
About how large are the gardens of Versailles?Answer: 800 hectares. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
At which château did Francis I make gardens from 1528 that held the first artificial grotto in France?Answer: Fontainebleau. Source: Wikipedia: Garden
By which nickname is the English landscape gardener Lancelot Brown known?Answer: Capability. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
The Château de Chenonceau has two gardens in the Italian style. One was made for Diane de Poitiers; for whom was the second, in 1560?Answer: Catherine de' Medici. Source: Wikipedia: Garden
Gertrude Jekyll championed the perennial garden. Which kind of garden did William Robinson champion?Answer: The wild garden. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
In which country did the natural, wall-free landscape garden emerge in the early 18th century?Answer: England. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
In which Italian city was the earliest botanical garden on record, in 1543?Answer: Pisa. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
One theory says cottage gardens arose after which event of the 1340s?Answer: The Black Death. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
Under which king did the formal French garden reach its height?Answer: Louis XIV. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
What do the French call their landscape garden in the English manner?Answer: Jardin anglais. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
Which movement of the early 20th century brought town planning to industrial areas to offset pollution?Answer: The Garden City Movement. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
Who was head gardener of the Gardens of Versailles under Louis XIV?Answer: André Le Nôtre. Source: Wikipedia: History of gardening
The vegetable garden 10
A vegetable garden grows food for the household. What is a larger garden that grows vegetables to sell called?Answer: A market garden. Source: Wikipedia: Kitchen garden
Broccoli is eaten as a vegetable. Which part of the plant is it?Answer: The flower. Source: Wikipedia: Vegetable
Hügelkultur, growing plants on piles of rotting wood, is a German loanword. What does it mean?Answer: Mound garden. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
In which year was the short form "veggie" first used?Answer: 1955. Source: Wikipedia: Vegetable
Keeping ducks to hunt slugs and insects is an example of which kind of pest control?Answer: Biological pest control. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
Medieval Latin "vegetabilis" gave English "vegetable". What was its sense?Answer: Growing, flourishing. Source: Wikipedia: Vegetable
Unlike F1 hybrids, which plants give seed that grows into plants like the parent?Answer: Heirloom or open-pollinated plants. Source: Wikipedia: Gardening
What is a kitchen garden called in Scotland?Answer: A kailyaird. Source: Wikipedia: Kitchen garden
Which French doctor and printer described the 16th-century kitchen garden in Maison Rustique?Answer: Charles Estienne. Source: Wikipedia: Kitchen garden
Which French word is another name for a kitchen garden?Answer: Potager. Source: Wikipedia: Kitchen garden
Houseplants 10
By 1960, which US state grew more than half of American houseplants?Answer: Florida. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
Commercial houseplant growing began in California in the 1920s with the pothos and which palm?Answer: The Kentia palm. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
In what did the Victorians grow their ferns, an early kind of terrarium?Answer: Wardian cases. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
In which rooms did wealthy British households grow imported citrus trees?Answer: Orangeries. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
Most houseplants are species adapted to which year-round range of temperature?Answer: 15 to 25 °C. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
Orchids reached Europe in 1818 by accident. How?Answer: As packing material around other plants. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
What does it mean to "force" a bulb, a fashion of the 18th century?Answer: To make it bloom out of season. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
What is another name for a houseplant?Answer: A potted plant. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
What was the 1989 NASA Clean Air Study set up to research?Answer: Ways to clean the air in sealed places such as space stations. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
Which flowers, set on window ledges, were the most affordable houseplant for the average Victorian?Answer: Geraniums. Source: Wikipedia: Houseplant
How this list was compiled
Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. Questions and wrong choices are our own. Each explanation restates, in our own sentences, a fact from the English Wikipedia article named and linked beside the question (https://en.wikipedia.org, text under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license): History of gardening, Garden, Gardening, Kitchen garden, Vegetable and Houseplant. The text of each article was fetched on October 2 or 3, 2026, and on October 3, 2026 the passage that states each fact was read in it before the question was kept. Left out on purpose: plant-care instructions, health claims for plants or gardening, current sales and production figures, and what other trivia sets on this site already ask (the victory garden, the annual plant, seed leaves, the friar's pea plants, Boston's Public Garden and its park designer). Levels are our estimate: easy is fair for any table, medium suits people who know the subject, hard will stump most tables. Each question also carries the date its article was read (checkedOn). Licence: own work