A backyard, or back yard (known in the United Kingdom as a back garden or just garden ), is a yard at the back of a house, common in suburban developments in the Western world. [1]
It is typically residential garden located at the rear of a property, on the other side of the house from the front yard. While Western gardens are almost universally based on plants, the "garden" (which etymologically may imply a shorthand of botanical garden) may use plants sparsely or not at all. Hence, the terms yard and garden are for the context of this article interchangeable in most cases.
In English suburban and gardening culture, back gardens have a special place. [2] In Britain 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 a fowl run, outhouse ("dunny"), vegetable patch, and woodheap. More recently, these have been replaced by outdoor entertainments such as a barbecue and swimming pool.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 low land value regions to use open land surrounding a house for vegetable 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 or back 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. A semi-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 is terraced, 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 being back-to-back houses found in northern industrial towns in England such as Leeds, but now mostly demolished. A private back yard with a "privy" (toilet) was a defining feature of the byelaw terraced house, a type of dwelling built to comply with the Public 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 on Bonfire Night, 5 November. Similarly, daytime usage is more common than nighttime.
Functionally, it may be used for:
In fact, its functional and recreational 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:
An apartment, flat, or unit is a self-contained housing unit that occupies part of a building, generally on a single storey. There are many names for these overall buildings. The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium, to tenants renting from a private landlord.
A semi-detached house is a single-family duplex dwelling that shares one common wall with its neighbour. The name distinguishes this style of construction from detached houses, with no shared walls, and terraced houses, with a shared wall on both sides. Often, semi-detached houses are built in pairs in which each house's layout is a mirror image of the other's.
A terrace, terraced house (UK), or townhouse (US) is a kind of medium-density housing that first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row houses or row homes.
An outhouse is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a toilet. This is typically either a pit latrine or a bucket toilet, but other forms of dry (non-flushing) toilets may be encountered. The term may also be used to denote the toilet itself, not just the structure.
Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany during World War I and World War II. In wartime, governments encouraged people to plant victory gardens not only to supplement their rations but also to boost morale. They were used along with rationing stamps and cards to reduce pressure on the food supply. Besides indirectly aiding the war effort, these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. This made victory gardens a part of daily life on the home front.
Night soil is a historically used euphemism for human excreta collected from cesspools, privies, pail closets, pit latrines, privy middens, septic tanks, etc. This material was removed from the immediate area, usually at night, by workers employed in this trade. Sometimes it could be transported out of towns and sold on as a fertilizer.
A yard is an area of land immediately adjacent to one or more buildings. It may be either enclosed or open. The word may come from the same linguistic root as the word garden and has many of the same meanings.
A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling,single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling.
Multifamily residential, also known as multidwelling unit (MDU)) is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants are contained within one building or several buildings within one complex. Units can be next to each other (side-by-side units), or stacked on top of each other (top and bottom units). Common forms include apartment building and condominium, where typically the units are owned individually rather than leased from a single building owner. Many intentional communities incorporate multifamily residences, such as in cohousing projects.
On a residential area, a front yard or front garden is the portion of land between the street and the front of the house. If it is covered in grass, it may be referred to as a front lawn. The area behind the house, usually more private, is the back yard or back garden. Yard and garden share an etymology and have overlapping meanings.
The Suntop Homes, also known under the early name of The Ardmore Experiment, were quadruple residences located in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and based largely upon the 1935 conceptual Broadacre City model of the minimum houses. The design was commissioned by Otto Tod Mallery of the Tod Company in 1938 in an attempt to set a new standard for the entry-level housing market in the United States and to increase single-family dwelling density in the suburbs. In cooperation with Frank Lloyd Wright, the Tod Company secured a patent for the unique design, intending to sell development rights for Suntops across the country.
Shandon is an area of Edinburgh within North Merchiston approximately three miles west of the centre of Edinburgh. It is bounded by Slateford Road to the north, Harrison Road to the east, the Union Canal to the south and the Glasgow-Edinburgh Shotts Line and Suburban rail lines to the west.
The Integral Urban House was a pioneering 1970s experiment in self-reliant urban homesteading. The house was located at 1516 5th St. in Berkeley, California between 1974 and 1984.
Tyneside flats are a form of UK domestic housing found primarily on Tyneside, including in Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, South Tyneside and North Tyneside. The first known example of this type was constructed in the 1860s.
A byelaw terraced house is a type of dwelling built to comply with the Public Health Act 1875. It is a type of British terraced house at the opposite end of the social scale from the aristocratic townhouse but a marked improvement on the pre-regulation house built as cheap accommodation for the urban poor of the Industrial Revolution. The term usually refers to houses built between 1875 and 1918.
Cressingham Gardens is a council garden estate in Lambeth. It is located on the southern edge of Brockwell Park. It comprises 306 dwellings, a mixture of four, three and two-bedroom houses, and one-bedroom apartments. It was designed at the end of the 1960s by the Lambeth Borough Council Architect Edward Hollamby and second architect Roger Westman, and built at the start of the 1970s. In 2012 Lambeth Council proposed demolishing the estate, to replace the terraced houses by apartment blocks. Most of the apartments would then be for sale to the private sector. The residents, those in Lambeth who wish to prevent the gentrification of the borough, and those who want to conserve what they believe to be important architectural heritage, are campaigning to prevent its demolition.
A pre-regulation terraced house is a type of dwelling constructed before Public Health Act 1875. It is a type of British terraced house at the opposite end of the social scale from the aristocratic townhouse, built as cheap accommodation for the urban poor of the Industrial Revolution. The term usually refers to houses built in the century before the 1875 Act, which imposed a duty on local authorities to regulate housing by the use of byelaws. Subsequently, all byelaw terraced housing was required to meet minimum standards of build quality, ventilation, sanitation and population density. Almost all pre-regulation terraced housing has been demolished through successive waves of slum clearance.
The Priory is a heritage-listed former farm, mental health facility, convent and homestead and now building, vacant building and proposed community arts uses at Manning Road, Gladesville in the Municipality of Hunter's Hill local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The main part of The Priory was designed by William Weaver and Henry Hardie Kemp, and built from 1847 to 1874 by Thomas Stubbs, The Marist Fathers in Australia, and Thomas Salter. It is also known as Gladesville Hospital, Gladesville Asylum and The Priory and curtilage. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 3 December 2004.
The Long's Lane Precinct, also Longs Lane Precinct, comprise a series of heritage-listed terrace houses located at 130 Cumberland Street, 132–134 Cumberland Street, 136-138 Cumberland Street, and 140–142 Cumberland Street, in the inner-city Sydney suburb of The Rocks in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The terrace houses were built from 1888 to 1914, and they are also known as 130 Cumberland Street,132–134 Cumberland Street, 136–138 Cumberland Street, Watson's Butchery, and 140–142 Cumberland Street. The properties are owned by NashCap, an Australian-based real estate private equity firm. The precinct and the terrace houses were added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 10 May 2002.
Linsley Terrace is a series of heritage-listed terrace houses located at 25–35 Lower Fort Street, in the inner city Sydney suburb of Millers Point in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1830. It is also known as Major House. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
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