ABSTRACT
A garden is ‘a piece of ground fenced off from cattle, and appropriated to the use and pleasure of man: it is, or ought to be, cultivated’.1 Repton’s definition has good etymological support: the words garden, yard, garten, jardin, giardino, hortus, paradise, paradiso, park, parc, parquet, court, hof, kurta, town, tun, and tuin all derive from the act of enclosing outdoor space. Thus the Old English word geard, meaning ‘fence’, produced our words ‘garden’ and ‘yard’. In American English an outdoor space attached to a house is known as a yard, if appropriated to use, and as a garden if appropriated to pleasure. Repton’s afterthought, that a garden ‘is, or ought to be, cultivated’ makes one smile at how little changes in the long history of gardens and gardening.
