Here in the States, we have these things called “yards” or “backyards”, that is, the land around your house where you set up the swing set or put up a birdbath or just use as a spot to flick your cigarette butts. I know that in jolly old England, you call these things “gardens.”
In the US, a “garden” implies a spot where someone is actively growing something. That is, a flower garden, or a vegetable garden, or an herb garden - generically speaking, you’d refer to any of these as a garden. A garden is something that is contained within the yard (or backyard, as it may be). For example, one’s backyard may consist of a plot of grass, and a garden over in the corner where someone planted some Begonias.
How do you crazy Brits differentiate between “the garden”, that is, what we would call the backyard, and the plot of land where your mother plants tomatoes?
When I was a kidlet, the yard was the stoney, paved area with no greenery, where the washing machine sat (it was a twintub) and the shed was located.
The garden was around the front, where there was a lawn and some flowerbeds.
When I first moved to the States, I was kindly informed by my then-husband that the “yard” was the bit with the lawn and flowers, and the “garden” was where you grew vegetables, if that’s what you did. He did later concede that in his opinion, the yard was invariably at the back of the house, and the garden was at the front, regardless of what was, or wasn’t, growing in each.
People in other parts of the world don’t have large useless areas of single species grass. I never could figure out why we Americans continue with such a strange and wasteful practice. (think of all the energy wasted and pollution generated keeping grass short and fertilized).
Hence, “garden” is the term used across the pond, and everyone knows what it means. It isn’t confined to Britain, the rest of Europe uses it too. In fact, you might say we’re the oddballs.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a ‘yard’ in the US is:
And in the UK a ‘garden’ is :
I guess in the UK/Ireland almost everyone has an area at the back of their house where they have grass and flowers of some type. I’d call this a garden. If they didn’t have grass I’d call it a ‘yard’
There’s no need to differentiate if 99% of the time it’s a ‘garden’.
Well, for a start it’s pretty difficult to grow tomatoes in this country without a greenhouse…
But that aside, a garden generally involves a lawn. It perhaps includes flower beds, or a vegetable patch, or a herb garden (recursive gardening! ). If there’s no grass, it’s unlikely to be referred to as a garden.
Speak for yourself. 'round here I waste almost no time or energy on my lawn. In fact, I sort of wish it would just go away and blend into the forest, but it perseveres despite my annoyance with it.
Anyway, I’m still don’t have an answer. Let’s forget about the grass part - a yard in the US (at least in my mind) is the space around your house regardless of whether or not there’s anything growing in it. I once lived in a house where the yard was completely paved over, for example. Another house had a yard covered in rocks. It was a distinct thing from a garden. Am I the only one who sees the difference between Yard and Garden in the US?
100% of the 10 people sharing this cube with me say that they say ‘frontyard’ and ‘backyard’ but only use garden when referring to an area at the back of the house that has a lawn and flowers/veg growing. When you buy/build a house you get a front and back yard as long as you have empty space around the house, but you have to work to produce a garden and to keep it a garden.
‘Garden’ is a catch-all term, as far as I know. If I wanted to be specific, I’d refer to the lawn or to the tomato/ fruit/ veg/ whatever patch. The only exception I can think of right now is herbs, which do sometimes grow in a garden of their own.
Then again, my own (parents’) garden is a sad and scruffy patch of green, so maybe a more green-fingered Doper will provide the definitive word.
I use no fertilizer or other additives for my yard, and I use a manually powered mower.
The reason I have a large grassy area (and I suspect I’m not alone) is for the kids. Not sure where you live, but in my suburban neighborhood, that’s the only place for the kids to play. There are no public parks and the streets are too busy.
Spendign time and money to keep the same plot of land decorated with flowers and bushes seems like the wasteful practice to me.
Here in Southern Ontario, ‘yard’ is the area around the house, and ‘garden’ is an area in the yard, which is under cultivation with the goal of yielding a crop.
The formal English garden of paths, pruned trees, hedges, and flowers is also found in a few areas in Toronto, mostly in public parks. I suppose you could consider these as having a visual ‘crop’ of blooming flowers; but part of calling them gardens is to distinguish them from the less-formal parks that surround them.
When I was a kid and we lived in this wonderful old house that sat on a big lot, we spoke of the ‘front yard’, the ‘side yard’, and the ‘back yard’. In the back yard was a vegetable garden. The lawn was the largest item in the yard, but the non-grassy items such as flowerbeds and the garden were also part of the yard. (The driveway was not.)
And you introduce yet another term: “bed”. Around here (Washington state) anyway, “garden” refers to the space where you grow things to eat. If you’re just growing flowers, then it’s not a garden. It’s a bed - flower bed.
Of course, then there’s a “rock garden”, which really contains nothing to eat…
One thing for the OP to remember is that many Britons - especially ones in big cities - don’t have much in the way of a “yard” one way or another. In London, for example, many homes don’t have a “front yard” at all (just sidewalk) and what would be the “back yard” in America is often a tiny patch of green stuff too small to plant grass in, so plants or small trees are grown there. So it is, in a way, a “garden” in the American sense too - it’s not a large area where grass simply grows, but a small collection of plants that are actively cared for.
Google for a man named “Sion Jenkins”. He was convicted for murdering his step-daughter, but was released for a retrial late last year. I’m sure some news site will have a picture of his “back yard” as this was somehow related to the case. I think that yard is typical of many Britons’ yards.
Every house I’ve ever lived in has had a back yard, which consisted of a concreted area just big enough for a chair, some pot-plants, and a washing line. Always the same width as the (terraced) house it’s attached to. Anything with a considerable area for plants/flowers/trees would be called a Garden. Calling it a yard would sound very odd.
