A garden with a history
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A horticultural club prepared a display about planting, pruning, and arranging a demonstration garden for a fictional valley. The model represented an ecosystem by including the garden's organisms alongside the soil, water, and other surroundings with which they interacted. Plants described as indigenous to the invented valley appeared on an older survey, before any gardeners had brought specimens from elsewhere. The students used that history to separate natural occurrence from later cultivation.
The club's horticultural notes explained which plants the imaginary gardeners selected and how they cared for each bed over the season. The ecosystem diagram reached beyond those choices, connecting the living inhabitants with the physical surroundings shown in the model. A plant could be indigenous to the valley yet absent from the cultivated beds, so the students avoided treating those categories as identical. Visitors could follow the labels without assuming that every garden plant originated locally.
Before you move on
Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.