What's the difference between a garden and a yard?
Researching the "garden" to distract from the "onset of winter"
Over the past month, we have been experiencing what Deutschebahn (the German Rail Network) described as “the onset of winter”. The Onset of Winter involved an incredible snow storm in Bavaria that ground the entire of Munich Central Station to a halt, with nearly all trains being cancelled for days. Everyone was quite over-excited about it. A lot of the lectures got cancelled, or moved to Zoom, and it made me feel at home to be able to complain about the trains.
When the snow started, I did the most obvious thing and went to visit Munich ring road and, of course, the nearby cemetery. Isn’t it gorgeous?
But after that, the snow got so heavy I couldn’t leave Freising. Being snowed in meant that I spent a lot of time walking around Freising, and looking at the snow. I quite liked seeing how people forged paths through it, creating new spaces.
I did try to embrace the experience and it was quite beautiful but, really, I don’t like walking about in snow. You have to be constantly on guard. Thankfully I have also been snowed under with work so I could distract myself…
For one of my assignments, we to research a word related to landscape in your mother tongue - I chose “garden” with my team mate, who is from Yemen. We had to contrast the words in each language and culture. I got quite into the literal history of the word garden, as I realised for the first time, the word has the same root as the word “yard”. So why do we have two words? I have shared some extracts from the project below if you would like to read it…
The snow has nearly all melted now and it is positively balmy … and I have just one more week before I fly home to England for Christmas. Finger’s crossed the trains are running perfectly in England, just as I remember them…
Gardens, yards and the English World View
“Garden” in English and England
Like thousands of English words, “garden” is derived from Middle French: jardin, meaning “cultivated enclosure”. Jardin developed from the same Germanic root word as “yard”, but instead of arriving to English via French, “yard” is an Anglo-Saxon word. I made this word tree to help understand the history of the word “garden” You can trace the words back to the Germanic root word and then follow the other branches, because there are so many similar words across Europe that mean either garden, park, yard or enclosure.
“Yard” and “garden” have subtly different meanings in Britain. Why? After the battle of 1066 in England, French-speaking Normans were the ruling class with Anglo-Saxon peasants. The mix of languages between Normans and Anglo-Saxons means that there are many instances of Germanic and Latin equivalents in English that reflect a difference in class: words with French-roots, like “beef”, are associated with ruling classes. In contrast, Germanic Anglo-Saxon terms, like “cow”, are associated with the workers. I think this difference is visible in the difference between “garden” and “yard”. In British English, contrast a beautiful manicured garden with a builder’s yard, brick yard or just a plain concrete yard at the back of your miserable rental property in South London, not that I’m talking from experience…
The History of Gardens and the English World View
England has a long history of gardens, that is very well documented. During my research I came across articles about the connection between gardening and colonialism. Fashions for gardening among the elite were influenced by the British world-view. For example, in the 18th Century, landscape gardening styles were influenced by idealistic visions of the plantation system in the Caribbean. James Petiver, a plant hunter at Kew Gardens, "often used enslaved people as collectors of plant and insect specimens because they had greater knowledge of them.”
These days, gardening is considered a national pastime.But we often (too often) overlook that the the legacy of colonialism and racism still impacts gardening in the UK today and it is not equally accessible to people, with ethnic minorities and low income communities less able to benefit from gardening: "Black people in the UK are four times as likely as white people to have no garden, balcony, or private outdoor space." There is so much more to write about on that topic, and I have been really disappointed about how it has not been addressed in the MA course in Sheffield. For this project, I only had space to do just a few lines on it.
Gardens and religion
The final aspect of the “garden” I looked at was the religious one. In Christian tradition, gardens are related to paradise with the Garden of Eden being a paradise we cannot access or imagine. The Garden of Eden contained “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food”, but it is also a paradise that humans were banished from. During my project I discussed the contrast of the Christian Eden and the one described in the Quran: while both mention this place, it is only in the Bible where the responsibility for banishment from this garden is placed primarily on Eve.
The concept of a paradise we’ve been banished from reflects a belief that paradise does not exist on Earth. The issue reminded me of the story of the Sky Woman as told in Braiding Sweetgrass. Robin Wall Kimmerer argues that the Christian creation story has particularly influenced European colonial cultures, saying “Look at the legacy of poor Eve's exile from Eden: the land shows the bruises of an abusive relationship.” Such a controlling relationship can be seen in the long tradition in English gardening, as well as our mental separation between humanity and nature.
It was a very interesting project and I have to admit the work my partner did about Yemen was much more interesting than my bit! We had to each make a concept map for each word too, which was a bit of fun. I did mine on Miro.
Omg, what an absolute ignorant race baiter. Gardening is racist?????? Ridiculous. There are poor white people just as there are poor black people. In fact, there are many, many thousands more white poor people that black people. Also, why is it only the black minority ever commented on? These race-baiters never comment on South Americans, Chinese, Asians, Eastern Europeans etc etc. Dumb isn't even in it!
An excellent article. Very interesting about the difference between "yard" and "garden" in English and the fact that French words were subsumed into English for the "posh" versions of lower class Anglo-Saxon words. Also incredible to see all that snow in Germany!