Jardiniere

Jardinière is a French word, from the feminine form of "gardener". Jardinière has three meanings:

1. A flower box, a receptacle (usually a ceramic pot or urn) or more rarely a stand upon which, or into which, plants may be placed. (The French themselves refer to tabletop versions of such receptacles as cachepots.) Jardinières tend to be highly decorative and are sometimes used as garden accent elements for large plants and for raised culinary and herb gardens.
2. A dish that is cooked or served with a mixture of spring vegetables, such as peas, carrots, and green beans.
3. A name for the golden ground beetle, the European mole cricket, and other species of beetles that attack plants in kitchen gardens.

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  Garden Urn, at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA.

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  Jardinière by Govert-Marinus Augustijn, ca. 1900.

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  Dragon jardinière at Kindrogan House, Enochdu, Scotland.

Gertrude Jekyll wrote:

There are some English words which have no equivalent in French, but then there are a great many more French words ... for which we have no English. One of these is jardinière. Even in French it does not quite rightly express its meaning, because the obvious meaning of jardinière is female gardener, whereas what we understand by it ... is a receptacle for holding pot-plants.^[1]

See also

• Container garden
• List of English words of French origin
• Potting soil

References

1. Gertrude Jekyll, Flower Decorations in the House, 1907. Quoted in Catherine Horwood, Potted History: The Story of Plants in the Home, p. 153.

External links

• Collection of jardinières at the Victoria & Albert Museum.