Like the British, the French use the word jardin (garden) for what Americans call the "yard." A vegetable garden is un potager, a flower garden is un massif. In Britain, a yard is what we would call a courtyard, or une cour in French. So, this is a photo of le potager dans notre jardin.
Left to right: the vegetable garden, the oregano patch, the apple trees, and the grape vines.
De gauche à droite: le potager, le massif d'origan, les pommiers, et les vignes.
I took this photo a day or so after cutting the grass in the west and north forties last week. It's grown a lot since then. Time to mow!
It’s called a garden (un jardín) here in Spain, too. Yours looks grand with the lawn mowed.
ReplyDeleteAh summertime! So pretty! Loved being there in person, but it was so fleeting!
ReplyDeleteOkay, now... thanks for this! I had never heard of using the term le massif for a flower garden. I don't know how I missed that! I always have taught parterre as a flower garden. So... I checked word reference to see if I was mistaken in my understanding of the use of parterre, and now I find that I have been teaching it as a feminine word all these years, and it's masculine. Geeeeeeeze LOL
ReplyDeleteAnd: After reading this today, I immediately thought of le massif central and I smacked my head and thought, "What!? All this time I should have been thinking of that area as a big flower-filled area!?" ... until I double checked that one, and see that un massif is also a mountain range. Dear heavens.
Judy, see my comment below.
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ReplyDeleteMassifhas nothing to do with flowers. It just means an important group of plants, mostly of the same kind, whether or not they have flowers. Your use of the word in massif d’origan is correct because there are a lot of them in that bunch.
ReplyDeleteHere is what the CNRTL says entre autres at Massif :
A. −
1. Groupe d'arbres ou d'arbustes concentrés dans un espace réduit, de manière que le feuillage soit perçu comme un tout continu. Derrière se trouvait un gros massif de hêtres et de sapins, large fond noir sur lequel cette jolie bâtisse se détachait vivement (Balzac,Méd. camp., 1833, p.119)
− Ensemble constitué de plantes ornementales ou de fleurs. Massif de tulipes. Assises derrière un massif de fleurs, deux horribles caissières, occupées à des calculs sans fin (Proust,J.filles en fleurs, 1918, p.811).Il regarda le massif de bégonias (Chardonne,Épithal., 1921, p.291).
I couldn’t find an adequate equivalent in French of Flower Garden , like potager for vegetable garden. Jardin à fleurs would be the closest, but not really used in French. I think a jardin is where the flowers are. Jardin is garden is yard?
ReplyDeleteI've heard our neighbors here describe what we would call their flower garden as un massif, even though it contains several varieties of plants and flowers. I guess a flower garden is a kind of or a feature of a jardin d'agrément.
DeleteYes, but, once again, on dit un massif de fleurs, un massif de tulipes, but massif by itself doesn’t mean flowers by any means. Your neighbors may refer to an isolated bulky group of flowering plants.
DeleteThanks for all of that, chm and Ken!
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