A communal garden (often used in the plural as communal gardens) is a normally formal garden for shared use by a number of local residents, typically in an urban setting. The term is especially used in the United Kingdom. The centre of many city squares and crescents (e.g., especially in London) are maintained as communal gardens.
Despite the name, and the fact that they typically look like a small public park, such gardens are normally privately by jointly owned, with sharing of maintenance costs. Access may be restricted by locked gates, with keys available for residents, or only unlocked during daytime. They are often surrounded by tall railings designed to keep people out.
One of the scenes in the 1999 film Notting Hill involves the two main characters, Anna (Julia Roberts) and William (Hugh Grant), breaking into private and locked communal gardens by climbing over the wall at night after a dinner party. The communal gardens used were Rosmead Gardens in Rosmead Road, Notting Hill, London.
Famous quotes containing the words communal and/or garden:
“Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the Fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation, had said, “All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up.” And they did.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)