What is a yard and what is a garden

Back again with another lost in translation question.

I thought British “Garden” = American “Yard”.

Then I picked up a book at the library with the sub title: “16 Easy-To-Build Projects for Your Yard & Garden” (I know it’s an American book because there’s a lot more capital letters than a British book title).

It says Yard & Garden! So, I’m asking what is your definition of a yard and garden? - doesn’t matter where on planet earth you live or where you come from, I’m interested.

For me, a yard is a small paved area at the back of a house. I associate them with town houses where space is a premium and there was no other outdoor space around the property - could be big Georgian city house or traditional working class terraces.

Garden is all the land within the property that isn’t the property itself.

A gardener is someone who looks after that space, traditionally paid help, but today I’d describe myself and my Dad as gardeners because it’s a hobby we enjoy.
Gardening is the activity of doing stuff in the garden that directly relates to the garden and typically includes mowing, weeding, planting, pruning. Etc. I thought British “Gardening” = American “Yard work” but I’m probably wrong on that one as well.  To quote Oscar Wilde:

Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

Hi Edward,
Here in the US, typically a garden is referring to a specific piece of land where you are trying to grow things other then grass. A flower garden or vegetable garden. A yard, typically refers to any cleared land adjacent to a house, typically covered in grass. A garden can be in a yard, but a yard does not need to have a garden.

In town, your yard is the out-of-doors space over which you have the most direct control. In a single-family residence, that means all the outdoor space attached by deed to the home. I think it's common that in a townhouse, you have a very small area -- the width of the domicile by 10-20 feet maybe in the back, that's your yard, and sometimes a similar, smaller, space in front. But I think the grassy commons outside of those aren't usually called one's yard. And this yard is still part of your yard even where it's heavily treed.

On acreage (and I'm not sure how much it takes), your yard is the cleared area around your house that receives more maintenance than the woods/farm/prairie/badlands/whatever that lies beyond.

A garden has growing things and possibly non-living ornaments and receives more tending than simple mowing and trimming.

(I've been in the US for 50 years, but I've lived on both coasts and three Midwestern states, so I'd guess that's representative.)

I would say most likely to a permie, they are one and the same.

To me, a yard is something a person mows with a lawnmower or lawn tractor.

A garden has things growing with paths.  These growing things can be vegetables or flowers or both.

Usually, there is no need for owning a lawnmower or a lawn tractor if you have a garden.

Unless you have both a yard and a garden, if so there is a need for a lawnmower or lawn tractor.

Everywhere I have lived has had a front yard and a backyard until I moved to where I now live.  There is no yard. There are two gardens.

As a non-native English speaker these considerations are very interesting.
I have studied and used English for decades but there are some concepts that I have only discovered in the past few years since diving into gardening in English-speaking platforms.

For me, I thought garden = Garten (which share the same etymology, obviously).
Yard was known to me only as courtyard or in the saying "not in my backyard".

We certainly do not make a distinction in German. You could have a garden full of veggies and flowers and native shrubs or a garden mostly consisting of lawn, or even worse, a so-called "Garten des Grauens" (horror garden, coined by a biologist who collects pictures of sterile and life-denying gardens) https://www.garten-landschaft.de/gaerten-des-grauens/

There are a couple of more things that I had not encountered by reading British books/news etc. but which seem specific to the US culture.
Those things are e.g. calling soil/earth "dirt". All my life I had believed that dirt is the opposite of cleanliness but apparently you use this word for beautiful earth?
Or "harvesting" chickens when you mean slaughter? I only ever knew "harvest" for things that grow like plants.

Also the generalized term critters or bugs is not used hereabouts. Some people may humourously refer to "Krabbeltiere" (crawling creatures) when they mean beetles, spiders etc. but normally you don't use a generic pejorative term.
As a linguist I am very intrigued by the different mentality that is expressed by language, and vice versa by the opinions which are shaped by the words we use.

I am sure there are more differences but these are the ones that came to mind first.

I'll toss in another word.   "Lawn".  

Yard:  outdoor space for personal recreational use
Garden;  space for growing plants other than lawn
Lawn:  outdoor space planted with grass, or clover mix, and is maintained with mowing.

A yard can include gardens and lawns, or patios, or courtyards (another word?).    Lawns and Gardens are possible elements in a yard but separate from one another, although either can have the other within it LOL.  

i think it's quite subjective, but personally I always imagined yard was a space, regardless of what covers it (pavement, grass, etc), while a garden is a space specifically for cultivating plants.
When visiting a friend in England recently, I noted she used garden where I would have said yard (referring to an uncultivated but fenced-in space outside her home where the neighborhood cats and hedgehogs were visiting); her neighbor had a space within his own garden in which he cultivated leeks, sunflowers, and green beans, which she classified as a vegetable plot.
Separated by a common language, as they say.....

My definition has modified over the years.  My “property” is the all inclusive term for all the land I own.  The woods is where there are lots of trees but not fruit trees. The garden is where I grow vegetables.  If a garden is solely for flowers, then I call it a flower garden. The driveway and parking lot are paved areas for vehicles.  The orchards are where I have fruit trees.  The paddocks are fenced areas where I keep livestock.   My property where there are none of the above, no buildings, and no pond is my yard.

I will offer this to further muddy the waters.
I have a yard that my house sits on.
I refer to that space as "my yard", as in "My  backyard is mess" or "I will build a raised bed in my front yard".
I garden in that space, but it isn't a garden.
To me a garden is a space for growing things that exists within a larger piece of land.
It is like a field except it doesn't need to specify what it is growing.
A field has to be field of wheat , corn , soy, etc, to designate it as a purposeful growing space.
A garden is always dedicate to growing things, unless it is specifically not, for example a rock garden.

Around the corner from my house, I own a vacant lot, purchased for the sole purpose of gardening.
I refer to this property as the "yarden"
As in " I want to have pig roast at the yarden" , or "I left my tools at the yarden"

I do not like, at all, the word slaughter.  That's why I say either 'harvest' or 'dispatch' when the time comes to ... harvest the chickens.

The yard is, the ground around your property that has grass.  Lawn is specifically the grass.

My daughter learned in school, that dirt is disturbed soil.  Here's her text to me when i asked her about it just now:

--------
i think its that soil is the whole assemblage of minerals organics air and organisms in the ground
when disrupted and messed up its no longer soil
if you got a big shovel full of soil and kept it intact and carefully put it down i think itd still be soil
--------

Has anyone heard that before?  

The paved area in the back yard of the house is the *patio*.  It's of course not lawn, is it part of the back yard, or does the back yard begin as soon as the patio ends?  I don't know!  The condos mentioned earlier, have no yard.  That's a concrete patio back there.

'Garden'.  A place where you intentionally (try to!) grow veg.  Hopefully no grass.  I grew up growing just veg, no flowers, so I cannot imagine calling a bed of flowers a 'garden'.  Something tells me others say that a collection of flowers is indeed a garden.  

Gary said, "My daughter learned in school, that dirt is disturbed soil.

What I have learned from this forum is that I do not have soil.  I have dirt.  Something along the lines of caliche which is crushed limestone.  No organisms, minerals, etc.

If I disturb my dirt, I still do not have soil.

I wish it was that easy.

Thanks to this forum I know how to make soil.

Gary Numan wrote:
--------
i think its that soil is the whole assemblage of minerals organics air and organisms in the ground
when disrupted and messed up its no longer soil
if you got a big shovel full of soil and kept it intact and carefully put it down i think itd still be soil
--------

Has anyone heard that before?  

Ah, another concept again.
Just looked up in the online Collins dictionary (British) which states:
Soil is the substance on the surface of the earth in which plants grow.

We have the most fertile soil in Europe.
...regions with sandy soils.

Synonyms: earth, ground, clay, dust

The article in Britannica does not mention "dirt" either when referring to soil:
https://www.britannica.com/science/soil

But I guess I understand the distinction.
Maybe soil would be more like our "Erdboden" and dirt something like simply "Erde" which literally means earth (also planet earth) and no double meaning as something dirty, stained.
But then again the word potting soil does not make sense? Definitely not the organically grown substrate without disturbing.

I have also read something interesting about the use of "homestead" in North America which does not translate well into other cultures but it was long ago and I don't really remember the essence off the top of my head.

William Bronson wrote:I will offer this to further muddy the waters.
I have a yard that my house sits on.
I refer to that space as "my yard", as in "My  backyard is mess" or "I will build a raised bed in my front yard".
I garden in that space, but it isn't a garden.
To me a garden is a space for growing things that exists within a larger piece of land.
It is like a field except it doesn't need to specify what it is growing.
A field has to be field of wheat , corn , soy, etc, to designate it as a purposeful growing space.
A garden is always dedicate to growing things, unless it is specifically not, for example a rock garden.

Around the corner from my house, I own a vacant lot, purchased for the sole purpose of gardening.
I refer to this property as the "yarden"
As in " I want to have pig roast at the yarden" , or "I left my tools at the yarden"

I used to refer to all my permaculture gardening as "yardening".  That was gardening everywhere except directly in the lawn, with the lawn meaning the grass areas that required mowing.  I tried to get yarden to take off in the mid 2000s, but it didn't really.  Now I get why - the US English language already has confusing enough words for all these things!  haha   Sorry, people of the world... sorry that I added to that confusion.

I do get confused with the Brit terms, though.  I like watching British housing shows, and that is where I learned the term "allotment" meant something akin to a community garden here in the US?

Now in the desert, with no lawn, my husband and I have had to pick new, specific terms for everything so we don't confuse one another.  Even "zone 1, zone 2" doesn't work so well for reasons easier to explain in person here.  So we call our drip irrigated yard landscaping areas "the landscaping".  This way we know if that area needs the drip turned on, the drip line checked for rabbit bites, etc.

Then we have an unfenced garden area that had a variety of herbs, rabbit and javelina-resistant foods and flowers, a rock garden, a fenced cactus garden, and two fenced main crop/kitchen gardens.  We created them over three years, and call three of them garden 1, garden 2, garden 3.  Then the rock garden and cactus gardens are called just that.  All these names are mainly so we can communicate about watering or where to find something cool (there's a Harris hawk in the rock garden!) or where to harvest something "could you pick me a tomato form Garden #2".  Then the rest of the area that is not actively watered we call "the property".

A term I don't think got mentioned in this thread yet "the back 40".  That means, essentially, your most distant acreage (like a farmer referring to his "back 40 acres", or the back of your property, or your zone 5 area.  I don't know where that comes from, but people say it on the west coast, maybe other areas, too?  But in places like Wyoming, where people own parcels that are thousands of acres of land, I'm betting they say something else.

By extension:
Yardwork is usually considered a chore, something often given to others to do: lawn care, leaves, pruning trees and hedges.

Gardening is often a hobby, with a desire to do it for pleasure and/or for the outcome: flowers, fruit, vegetables.

I work with a Scot, and she says both "I was working in the garden this weekend", and "I did some gardening this weekend". The first I understand as "yardwork" the second more as "flower/herb gardening".

Garden is growing food.  Mostly annual but some perennials.  Yard is the rest of the property that isn't buildings or ponds but fenced away the fields and natural areas.

Kim Goodwin wrote:
I do get confused with the Brit terms, though.  I like watching British housing shows, and that is where I learned the term "allotment" meant something akin to a community garden here in the US?

An allotment in Great Britain or Kleingarten, Schrebergarten or Krautgarten (the latter literally meaning cabbage garden, specific to Bavaria) are not the same as community gardens. A community garden is a project often found in cities where people get together to garden on a plot, often gathering at certain times for planting, harvesting, celebrating. These exist in Europe as well.

But an allotment or Kleingarten is where individuals can rent (or buy) a small plot in an area designated for private gardening. Both in GB and in Germany they have a long tradition and served as a source of foods and vitamins for the labouring classes which often had a flat without garden space (the plots are "allotted" to you).

Where I live the communities (villages) had a plot just outside the village where each family had one share that was assigned to the house. Our allotment garden is in the next town over where many of the original owners were not interested in the garden plot anymore and started to lease or sell them. Usually there are waiting lists to get one, especially in cities like Munich.
https://germangirlinamerica.com/what-is-a-schrebergarten/

BTW, I am happy that we have a Krautgarten and not a Schrebergarten, because for the second category you have to obey lots of rules and regulations whereas we are free to plant what we want, including letting weeds grow and installing habitats for amphibes and other wildlife.

I don't have much different to say about this than the Americans. Yard is the immediate, probably more tended area around the house. Garden is the area you grow specific plants, other than mowed grass. A garden could have ornamental grass in it, though.

Our place has what I call a yard, but it's not tended, other than some sporadic efforts to keep the bracken at bay. It's just an area around the house that we do most of our stuff in and have our outbuildings.

It occurs to me that American prisons have what's called a yard, and that's a paved area. At least, it is on tv. That's as far as my experience with that goes...so far, at least 😁

I use soil and dirt fairly interchangeably, but sometimes I'll use dirt specifically for dead, no organic material or microorganism type stuff.

I've only recently, like in the last ten years or so, heard animal slaughter referred to as harvesting. It sounds jarring to me, like an adult saying they have to pee pee or using other baby talk. If I intellectualise it, it bothers me because it seems to trivialize and deny the animals the reality of what's happening to them. They're not being gently gathered up, they're being killed. It feels disrespectful to me.

Being that this is the meaningless drivel forum I feel that it may be acceptable to spout the following drivel.

A yard is the place where all the boys are drawn by means of my milkshake.

Furthermore, if I may be allowed some interpretive freedom.

Thereafter the boys thus drawn say to me, your yard is better than the other guy's.

To which I feel compelled to reply, "Damn right. I could teach you permaculture principles, but I'd have to charge."

Jan White wrote:I've only recently, like in the last ten years or so, heard animal slaughter referred to as harvesting.

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe it's the type of content I consume where people are making videos about homesteading, but this use was new to me.

As for dirt vs. soil: it occurs to me it's probably the same as other English words with similar meanings that were added after the Norman conquest and took on different meanings according to who used them. The higher classes used the French-origin terms while the lower classes stayed with the old Anglo-Saxon ones, the classic example is words for meat, used by the people rich enough to eat them, versus the old words for the animals used by the people who cared for them (pork/pig, beef/ox).
Both soil and dirt have the same original meanings (both involve growing mediums as well as poop), but today we do somersaults to explain why soil is better than dirt. Yet peasants still scrabble in the dirt, while scientists examine soil.

Kenneth Elwell wrote:By extension:
Yardwork is usually considered a chore, something often given to others to do: lawn care, leaves, pruning trees and hedges.

Gardening is often a hobby, with a desire to do it for pleasure and/or for the outcome: flowers, fruit, vegetables.

When I lived in New Jersey, yard work was done by paid professionals driving monster trucks and trailers. Typically one or two chaps would mount up on massive drive on mowers, a couple would strap on leaf blowers and a fifth guy with a strimmer. This was the sound track of my neighbourhood which almost drowned out the sound of private jets and The Garden State Parkway.

I saw very little evidence of any gardening!

Can’t say I miss NJ.

L. Johnson wrote:Being that this is the meaningless drivel forum I feel that it may be acceptable to spout the following drivel.

A yard is the place where all the boys are drawn by means of my milkshake.

Furthermore, if I may be allowed some interpretive freedom.

Thereafter the boys thus drawn say to me, your yard is better than the other guy's.

To which I feel compelled to reply, "Damn right. I could teach you permaculture principles, but I'd have to charge."

Bahahaha!!! I think this discussion need go no further 😁

Anita Martin wrote:
An allotment in Great Britain or Kleingarten, Schrebergarten or Krautgarten (the latter literally meaning cabbage garden, specific to Bavaria) are not the same as community gardens.

I love the word Krautgarten! I have a fondness for German words. (I lived in Germany as a teen, my Dad was stationed there when he was in the army).

English is very rich with words borrowed from other languages especially greek and roman. It feels like intellectual snobbery, where as German says it as it is. English needs to borrow more words from the germans.

Tereza Okava wrote:
As for dirt vs. soil: it occurs to me it's probably the same as other English words with similar meanings that were added after the Norman conquest and took on different meanings according to who used them. The higher classes used the French-origin terms while the lower classes stayed with the old Anglo-Saxon ones, the classic example is words for meat, used by the people rich enough to eat them, versus the old words for the animals used by the people who cared for them (pork/pig, beef/ox).
Both soil and dirt have the same original meanings (both involve growing mediums as well as poop), but today we do somersaults to explain why soil is better than dirt. Yet peasants still scrabble in the dirt, while scientists examine soil.

Wood - a place where anglo saxon peasants went for firewood and foraging
Forest - a place where norman aristocracy went to hunt wild animals and peasants

Peasant is a Norman word from french for countryman . . .

Oh, and Garden and Yard both have a common root, which I hadn’t thought about until now. Both originally meant an enclosed area. English has lots of hard J’s and G’s which are Y’s in other Northern European languages.

As for field names, the school I went to had many sports fields. They all had bizarre names, some more obvious than others. Penny Farthings was once the annual rental cost. A farthing was one quarter of a penny and much smaller - hence penny farthing bicycle. Borrett’s was the hockey field named after Norman Borrett who was an old boy who played Hockey for England. (I had no idea when I was there and only discovered it through wikipedia. There must be hundreds of thousands of fields in the UK whose names are no longer known except maybe by the few locals who still work them.

Even though I only have a very small plot of land, I’m going to stretch my creativity muscle and come up with some good names for the different areas.

Anita Martin wrote:A community garden is a project often found in cities where people get together to garden on a plot, often gathering at certain times for planting, harvesting, celebrating.

This does not describe the community gardens I've been (slightly) involved with in California, Missouri, and Minnesota. There were occasional group work-days when everyone was expected to come and clean up, but they were 1-2 per year and mostly the gardening was done by individuals on their own plot (sometimes enclosed in a chain-link cage/cubicle) on their own schedule, using their own techniques.

Edward Norton wrote:Oh, and Garden and Yard both have a common root, which I hadn’t thought about until now. Both originally meant an enclosed area. English has lots of hard J’s and G’s which are Y’s in other Northern European languages.

Oh wow, that's a super-cool realization!

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Anita Martin wrote:A community garden is a project often found in cities where people get together to garden on a plot, often gathering at certain times for planting, harvesting, celebrating.

This does not describe the community gardens I've been (slightly) involved with in California, Missouri, and Minnesota. There were occasional group work-days when everyone was expected to come and clean up, but they were 1-2 per year and mostly the gardening was done by individuals on their own plot (sometimes enclosed in a chain-link cage/cubicle) on their own schedule, using their own techniques.

Edward Norton wrote:Oh, and Garden and Yard both have a common root, which I hadn’t thought about until now. Both originally meant an enclosed area. English has lots of hard J’s and G’s which are Y’s in other Northern European languages.

Oh wow, that's a super-cool realization!

In the US, I'm only familiar with the Seattle P-Patch organization - https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/p-patch-community-gardening - which I gather has exported its setup to some other cities.  There, I rented a single row in a Patch for the planting season.  Rules depended on the Patch - some allowed access year-round, some required you clean up your row at the end of the season and plowed everybody's fresh at the beginning of the next.  There was usually a waiting list, but if you wanted your row the next year and hadn't abandoned it to weeds, you had priority.  Rows were pretty tiny in the densest neighborhoods, and huge in the big Picardo Farm Patch (but getting there was a pain).  Each Patch had a water supply, a small shed with some communal tools, and regular community events.

Going from that to a Kleingarten, which contains a cottage and more usable garden space than my Seattle (not-tiny) yard had, was quite a change!

Edward Norton wrote:As for field names, the school I went to had many sports fields. They all had bizarre names, some more obvious than others. Penny Farthings was once the annual rental cost. A farthing was one quarter of a penny and much smaller - hence penny farthing bicycle. Borrett’s was the hockey field named after Norman Borrett who was an old boy who played Hockey for England. (I had no idea when I was there and only discovered it through wikipedia. There must be hundreds of thousands of fields in the UK whose names are no longer known except maybe by the few locals who still work them.

Ooh, how very interesting! I always meant to read a book by Robert Macfarlane, but haven't come around yet, you probably have heard of him.

It is similar with German field names. The history of some of these is so old that modern people do not recognize their roots anymore, it is like a journey into the past.
I am member of our local association of historians/researchers and the annual publication often lists some of the field names of our village. It is a nerdy topic and I love it, often the field names / names of the homesteads were used synonymous or instead of family names. I have a line of ancestors that sat on a plot called "Höllhund" (hellhound) and they were called Höllhund as well ;-)

In our next issue of the publication I will contribute an article on country gardens and I begin with the description of the old Germanic "garto" which meant a piece of land that was surrounded by stakes or willowed trellises and which is mother of English yard, garden and German Garten.

Edward Norton wrote:
English is very rich with words borrowed from other languages especially greek and roman. It feels like intellectual snobbery, where as German says it as it is. English needs to borrow more words from the germans.

There's a reason for this. When William the Conqueror laid claim also to the throne of England, there was a deliberative gentrification program put into effect. It was indeed illegal to use many of the older Old English words which were German based because they sounded "crude," particularly when referring to bodily functions. Much of our profanity even today you will notice is germanic based: fuck, cock, cunt, shit, bitch, etc. If I remember correctly, about 80% of english vocabulary is latin based as a result.

I rent a plot at what is called a "community" garden and many visitors seem confused by it.    Because I spend a lot of time on YouTube UK allotment tour pages I think of it as an allotment garden vs. a community garden.   Visitors sometimes thing the food is "free" or want to know where/how to buy it.   When you explain that each plot is rented by an individual and all the food produced on it belongs to them that are surprised.    

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Anita Martin wrote:A community garden is a project often found in cities where people get together to garden on a plot, often gathering at certain times for planting, harvesting, celebrating.

This does not describe the community gardens I've been (slightly) involved with in California, Missouri, and Minnesota. There were occasional group work-days when everyone was expected to come and clean up, but they were 1-2 per year and mostly the gardening was done by individuals on their own plot (sometimes enclosed in a chain-link cage/cubicle) on their own schedule, using their own techniques.

I think this is a confusing distinction between US and Europe. In the UK I would also say a community gardens are worked as a group...Whilst looking for examples I found a community orchard near where I was brought up: blewbury orchard I mention it here because it was made in a field called 'Tickers folly field'....there must be a story there! They also have a Permculture plot as well which looks fab:

source

Heather Staas wrote:I'll toss in another word.   "Lawn".  

Yard:  outdoor space for personal recreational use
Garden;  space for growing plants other than lawn
Lawn:  outdoor space planted with grass, or clover mix, and is maintained with mowing.

A yard can include gardens and lawns, or patios, or courtyards (another word?).    Lawns and Gardens are possible elements in a yard but separate from one another, although either can have the other within it LOL.  

When I grew up, we used one more term in addition to Heather's list:

Garden beds: space for growing (mostly ornamental) plants, typically along or around the lawn, buildings, driveway, or as islands in the lawn, etc.

In my experience, "garden beds" was a label that was distinct from a "garden" that grew edibles, or was more for show or collections (like a rose garden) only.

Ever since I'd heard Europeans often (usually?) use "yard" to mean where the livestock are turned out, I've tried to change my language to calling a typical America "yard" a "garden" instead.

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:
Ever since I'd heard Europeans often (usually?) use "yard" to mean where the livestock are turned out, I've tried to change my language to calling a typical America "yard" a "garden" instead.

I think I'd use "yard" only as a word for a paved area that was mostly surrounded by buildings, usually associated with another term, hence farmyard, courtyard...(as well as the measurement of three feet) I might not use it for animal enclosures like "chicken yard", I'd probably use "chicken pen", but this might be regional, or because I don't keep livestock.

You can definitely have different gardens within a garden - I have the "former dog resistant garden" (silly name, but it did make sense for a while!) and my "secret garden" in my front garden, as well as the "lawn" (a bit of a misnomer as I've not mowed it this year) and the "drive bank". You could have a "herb garden" a "vegetable garden" a "white garden" and a "sculpture garden" all different parts of the same garden.