Hi Thinman, I've had the same question! You could ask Campanula over on the Antique Rose forum...

LOL, after giving this some thought I really don't know where I fit, but, if talking about my garden while standing out front, I say you can't see my garden from here it's behind the fence in the back yard. I use other terms too like it's in the back forty (forty steps from the back door :).

Annette

Maybe what we call a garden they call a bed.

I like louisianagal's idea! Perhaps the big difference is that British gardens incorporate small areas of lawn (other than at those wonderfully huge grand estates and castles) as part of the 'garden' and here in the US, we have made the lawn the largest part of the yard in most cases. Does that make sense? I will ask one of the Brits on the Hosta forum.

We have very little grass, so I do tend to think of my entire yard as my garden. Of course, it is a pretty pathetic garden, but maybe someday...

I'll ask my pen pal to clarify for us. I'm just about to post a letter to her. We've been writing for 30+ years and are both avid gardeners. She does sometimes refer to certain "beds" in her garden. In England, a garden is a garden. A yard is a measure of length or distance.

They don't often have much space for planting in front or at the sides of their homes from what I've seen on several visits. Their gardens are also generally walled/fenced and are quite tiny by suburban U.S. standards. Where I am an acre is the smallest that's allowed by code.

As a native speaker of 'British' I would say:

'Garden' to refer to everything inside your boundary whatever the size - lawn, trees, shrubs, paving - everything. It could be a few square feet or many acres, but it's still a garden. The whole thing is usually enclosed within a fence, wall or hedge. Not many gardens here have no physical boundaries.

A 'bed' is a piece of cultivated ground within the garden e.g. a flower bed, a rose bed, etc.

A 'yard' is a paved or concreted space on a farm, at a stables or behind a small house which has no garden. A backyard is the tiny paved space behind a terraced (row) house of the kind built in industrial areas in the 19th century.

Since most of our gardens are much smaller than US yards we do not distinguish between two different types of area, those we tend carefully and those we just keep tidy. The whole lot is gardened.

You are right, thinman - a cottage garden would have been the whole cultivated area outside a cottage - including fruit trees and vegetables. It has now come to mean a style of gardening rather than a space.

As others are saying... I think 'garden' in England refers to the whole space, which includes the flowerbeds and lawns. I consider my garden to be the whole property. Like Gertrude Jekyll, my goal was always to have a garden with a house in it, not a house that has gardens around it. It's a subtle but important distinction. I think 'yard', when it doesn't refer to a linear measure, refers to 'industrial' spaces - e.g. shipyard, farmyard, etc., so it wouldn't be too flattering to consider your garden a yard! :-)

That's interesting. How confusing that a "yard" is paved or concrete over there.
What exactly is a shrubbery? They mention a shrubbery in one of the Monty Python movies. : )

Wikipedia to the rescue on that one... see link below

Here is a link that might be useful: shrubbery

A shrubbery is what Wiki says it is. It's essentially a 19th century concept and not many people nowadays would talk about planting a shrubbery. Apart from anything else we don't have room for a separate shrub area.

gardenweed - the lack of space for building here means an acre could have 9 homes on it at current average densities.

I guess that's why many people have "allotments", right?

Here is what UK-Hostaman answered when I asked:
hello Cynthia....well i will try and answer your questions the best i can!....
A yard to us in the UK is generally considered to be a small area outside your back door,usually covered in concrete with little plant life(maybe the odd weed)

A garden in the UK is considered a plot of land,of any size, that has some form of organized plant life growing in it

A cottage garden is alittle harder to explain,as its usually a larger plot of land,much like the average size you have in the US,that is crammed with as many plants as you could hope to find!...

On a general note,it is so sad to see over here that all these new houses that are being built have such small gardens and seem to be packed so close together..im so jealous of all the gardens i see on this forum with so much space!..i hope this helps alittle!

I've visited friends in Thame, Oxfordshire a number of times. One lives in a semi-detached which we'd call a duplex. The other lived in one of the houses on the Rycote Estate. The house and property/garden were larger, however the house (Oak Cottage) was built around 1540 and offered few amenities, one of which was an outdoor loo at the bottom of the garden.

flora_uk - I'm trying to picture 9 houses squeezed onto my little green .94 acre. In my small rural town most properties are two or more acres and far too much of that is lawn. Yawn.

I just noticed that floraUK and I were posting at about the same time this morning. I didn't 'refresh' before I posted so didn't see flora's post. Her explanation was a lot better than mine!

Lots are getting much smaller here. There's a big spat going on in our neighbourhood now with a developer who wants to put lots of semi-detached houses on ~ 35'x100' lots when the existing houses are all detached houses on 1/4 acre lots. On the one hand, small lots reduce suburban sprawl and are efficient for the Town to service (water and sewer etc.); on the other hand, they are out of character with the neighbourhood. Sometimes the Town decides in favor of the developer and sometimes in favor of keeping existing scale of the neigtbourhood. It's hard to tell which way things will go.

Wow, I got my answer, in several different ways and quickly! Thank you all very much for helping me with this. I should be able to get a good night's sleep tonight without this question gnawing at me. :)

TM

The first time I visited England & stayed with a friend, the neighbors loved to sit around her living room (?parlor?) and listen to me because I "talked so funny." It was all in good fun but I was a bit surprised at the time. Eh, it seems people in small towns are pretty much the same wherever you go.

Sleep well TM.

Here (in TX) a yard is the area around a house. A garden is where we plant our veggies.
The areas where annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs etc. are grown in "beds".
We also say mow the grass, not mow the lawn. But.... the thing that cuts the grass we do call a lawnmower.

No wonder immigrants have a tough time learning what we mean.

Woodyoak: Thank You for the quote, I am going to adopt that...Dh(I call him the house hubby) will have to adjust!lol! Last year I was in TX and at a dinner party held in my honor; I was told how cute my accent was...I was told I sounded like Sarah Pallin!lol!

I can explain in very simple terms. In England we say garden because a yard is made purely of concrete. Anyone who has ever built a house will tell you that concrete is measured by the yard when it's ordered. So, you see, a yard whether in the front or the back is a strip of concrete. A good example is "Scotland Yard" or at a school "play yard'. Do you hire a 'gardener" in the US? Doesn't he mow your lawn? You don't have to grow veggies to have a garden.
JackieBrit

DH grew up in Scotland (went to school with Tony Blair) and spent his holidays in Hawick, Scotland.
They had "the walled garden" which was an acre vege garden surrounded by a rock wall. The rest was just "outside" which was about 10,000 acres at the time! It's now a B&B called Hoscote House. They had to sell it to pay the taxes! NT

Well Thinman...you've done it again. (applause.....)
You sure like shaking things up on here and seeing what falls out! (ha ha ha)
"speak British"...LOL
You devil you.
~Annie

Annie - I'm not really a devilish kind of guy. Really. :) It was a mostly serious question, but when a little fun pops up in the course of our dear cottagers' answering, well, that's good too.

Annie says Hi. :)

TM

I know you posted this as a serious topic, but I also know that you enjoy phrasing things certain ways...
Kind of like throwing a little snake into the chicken pen.
All kinds of reactions are bound to occur.
Lots of fun.
--------------------------------
Ahhhh...Dear little Annie is all grown up now. Give her hugs from her "Auntie Annie" :)

Annie - remember we are bred with an extremely high irony threshold over here. I saw no snake.