This drove me nuts for years. Some Brit article would refer to strolling in the back garden. There’s no corn, beans, or tomatoes growing in that photo. 
Finally figured out GARDEN = YARD 
So what do they call a plot of land where veggies, beans and tomatoes are grown?
Do the Brits grow anything but grass in their gardens?
It’s confusing because I have a small garden in my backyard.
Would be funny as hell if it was ‘Yard’.
My British friends call theirs a vegetable garden.
Flowers, trees, green plants. The British have some of the most beautiful, exquisitely planned and tended gardens in the world.
Was this while you were out doing a spot of yarding?
My impression, FWIW, is that “lawns” (plural) or “grounds” are broad expanses of greensward such as might be found around old upper-class couuntr homes such as Blenheim, Sandringham, etc. A “garden” with no modifier is a small area of greensward bordered and/or interrupted by shrubbery and/or flower beds. Use of “garden” in the American sense would call for specifying “flower garden” or :vegetabke garden." How close have I come to describing normal British usage?
(BTW, an Australian “paddock” is, I think, an American lawn.)
The part where you grow vegetables is still part of the garden and it would be the vegetable garden or vegetable patch.
The lawn(s) at somewhere like Blenheim Palace would be the areas of well-kept grass immediately around the house.
The lawn to your average British person whose houses don’t sit in large areas of parkland, would be the grass area(s) in their garden.
Yep the whole thing is the garden, which may contain a lawn, vegetable patch, greenhouse, gazebo, flower beds, shrubberies, trees and the remains of some herring, as it turns out herrings are not very useful tools for doing yard work with.
And in Britain, if you said your house had a yard or back yard, that would imply that it was concreted or asphalted over. A yard is something much inferior to a garden.
My British cousin, whose garden consists of a lawn, floral borders and, at the far end, a vegetable patch, was (mildly) offended when my American wife complimented her on her “lovely yard”.
Some British people also maintain an allotment for growing vegetables, but this will be an area of land separate from the house, usually a small division of a large field consisting of many other people’s allotments.
Ni!
Not at all.
A paddock is a fenced area of land used to grow livestock or crops. In general, a paddock can range from 1 to 15,000 Ha and beyond. It can be cultivated (think heavy-duty machinery to do so) or it can be just native vegetation which is the fodder for critters like cows and sheep.
To us, a yard is something you’d see on a farm, a dirty patch of concrete with few wandering chickens. Not a patch of greenery in sight. A garden is your whole outside area, which may include grass, plants, trees, vegetables, anything. Brits tend to take immense pride in their gardens. US gardens (yards) look pretty bland to us - just big patches if grass.
An area of the garden dedicated to veggies would be the ‘vegetable garden’ or ‘vegetable patch’. If the entire garden was devoted to edible plants, we would call that a ‘kitchen garden’.
Gardens come in all sizes, from my miserable effort to the landscaped gorgeousness if the grandest stately home.
Yep, gardening is a particular British obsession. The Chelsea flower show ( the biggest gardening exhibition in the world) gets daily prime time coverage on the BBC for the whole well it’s on. I think our mild damp climate makes for good growing conditions.
Some (real) estate agents will try and make this area sound better by calling it a “patio”.
Not really, domestic homes don’t have yards, so patio is perfectly correct. Yards are attached to commercial premises.
Are you sure? Just look at njtt’s posting again. Where I come from in the Midlands, we used to call the hard surfaced area at the back of a house a “yard”.
The rear areas of the typical “Coronation Street” houses are paved with no growing area and would be called yards in any UK area that I’ve ever lived. There may be some regional variation of course.
In Ireland also. Though I agree that a modern house is more likely to have a “patio” or a “low maintenance rear garden”.
It’s perfectly possible for a house to have a yard and a garden, the one being a paved area and the other being an area with grass or plants. The yard may (at best) be tidy but not “lovely”.
My Dad’s house has a tiny square of grass-covered land, the perimeter of which is planted with bushes and flowers he tends. We’ve always called it “the back yard.” Ditto neighbors with their similar areas in the back.
The front lawn, larger but not by much, was called, er…the front lawn.