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Abackyard, orback yard (known in the United Kingdom as aback garden or justgarden), is ayard at the back of ahouse, common in suburban developments in the Western world.[1]
It is typicallyresidential garden located at the rear of a property, on the other side of thehouse from thefront yard. While Western gardens are almost universally based on plants, the "garden" (which etymologically may imply a shorthand ofbotanical garden) may use plants sparsely or not at all. Hence, the termsyard andgarden are for the context of this article interchangeable in most cases.
In Englishsuburban andgardening culture, back gardens have a special place.[2] InBritain there are over 10 million back gardens.[3] British planning require minimum distances between the rear faces of adjacent dwellings and so there is usually space for a back garden of some sort. In other countries, such as Australia, this does not apply and preference for buildings with a large footprint has tended to squeeze out the space at the rear.[4]
In Australia, until the mid-20th century, the back yard of a property would traditionally contain afowl run, outhouse ("dunny"),vegetable patch, andwoodheap. More recently, these have been replaced by outdoor entertainments such as abarbecue andswimming pool.[5] But, since the 1990s, the trend in Australian suburban development has been for back yards to disappear as the dwellings now occupy almost all of the building plot.[1]
In higher latitudes, it is economical in lowland value regions to use open land surrounding a house forvegetable gardening during summers and allow sunlight to enter house windows from a low horizon angle during winters. As land value increases, houses are built nearer to each other. In order to preserve some of the open land, house owners may choose to allow construction on the side land of their houses, but not build in front of or behind their house in order to preserve some remnants of open surrounding land. The back area is known as the backyard orback garden.
A back garden arises when the main building divides the surrounding gardens into two. This happens especially in the high density housing of British cities and towns. Asemi-detached house typical of the British suburbs of the 20th century will have front gardens which face the road and provide access. The back gardens in such cases will be more secluded and access will typically be via the dwelling or by a path around the side. A front garden is a formal and semi-public space and so subject to the constraints of convention and law. However, the back garden is more private and casual,[6] and so can be put to more purposes.
If the housing isterraced, then no side path is possible and access may be provided by an alley which runs behind the rear of the terrace. While buildings opening directly onto a street may not have a front garden, most will have some space at the back, however small; the exception beingback-to-back houses found in northern industrial towns in England such asLeeds, but now mostly demolished. A private back yard with a "privy" (toilet) was a defining feature of thebyelaw terraced house, a type of dwelling built to comply with thePublic Health Act 1875.
Because of weather constraints, it is usual to use a garden more in the summer than in the winter, although some usages are traditional, such as for a bonfire onBonfire Night, 5 November. Similarly,daytime usage is more common than nighttime.
Functionally, it may be used for:
In fact, its functional andrecreational use is so varied, that it cannot be easily categorised. Many of the freedoms of the use of the back garden come from the restrictions, social or legal of what are not done in the front.
Usually, clothes are not dried, vegetables are not grown, and sunbathing is not carried out in a front garden. All these can happen in the privacy of the back garden.
Traditionally, people treat a back garden as private to themselves, and not those they are neighbours to. The social etiquette of how one can greet and interact one's neighbours may be complex and defined by many informal social rules.
In some areas, talking to one's neighbours over the back wall (the side wall following the property boundary line) is usual, and is a welcome form of neighbourliness, while in other places it is not.
Depending on the size of the backyard, it may have any number of items (or none), such as:
Every resident ... has a private garden divided into two areas, the front and the back garden whose social role is ...
The back garden is usually more private and casual
Media related toBackyards at Wikimedia Commons| Shared rooms | |
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