1. A garden in which fruit and vegetables for the table are grown. Also attrib.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Iardin à herbes & arbres, a kitchin garden.
1629. Parkinson, Paradisus Terrestr., title-p., With a Kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, & fruites for meate or sause.
1793. Trans. Soc. Arts (ed. 2), V. 45. Dutch Turneps, sowed on beds in my Kitchen garden.
1884. J. Hatton, in Harper’s Mag., July, 234/2. There is a kitchen-garden with … asparagus beds and potato-patches.
attrib. 1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort. (1729), 193. Kitchen-Garden Herbs may now be planted as Parsley, Spinage, Onions, Leeks.
1712. J. James, trans. Le Blond’s Gardening, 3. A Garden … fill’d with Kitchen-Garden Stuff.
2. A kindergarten in which house-work, esp. kitchen-work, is taught. U.S. local.
1893. in Barrows’ Parlt. Relig., II. 1483. Kindergartens, kitchengartens, and nightschools … are among the methods employed.
Hence Kitchen-gardener, -gardening.
1766. Entick, London, IV. 191. The upper part is occupied as a warehouse by fruiterers and kitchen-gardeners.
1822–34. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), II. 643. It was not … till the beginning of the sixteenth century that any great progress was made in the art of kitchen-gardening in our country.
1893. Daily News, 26 Jan., 5/5. ‘Kitchen-gardening’ is the curious name bestowed upon their labours by the ladies of an American city, who teach a class of poor children to sew, cook, dust, sweep, make beds, and wash clothes.
