This time of the year, the giáng hương tree in my grandma’s courtyard is probably blooming with clusters of golden blossoms, enticing the kids in the neighborhood to gather around it and carefully pick off the prettiest petals to create makeshift jewelry.
Grandma’s yard is at times tranquil, at times rambunctious, but always peaceful despite the relentless pulse of time. To past generations of Vietnamese, the courtyard was an indispensable part of their daily life. In the design of traditional homes, yards existed not just as something to marvel at, but also as a crucial component to the house, where family members go through their routine, create things, and experience every facet of the human condition. Any patch of land, be it in front or on the side of the house, can become a space for spiritual living — a familiar anchor of the innocence of childhood.
The courtyard in the residence of artist Mộng Bích in Bắc Ninh. Photo via Happynest.
In Văn minh vật chất của người Việt (The Material Civilization of the Vietnamese People), writer Phan Cẩm Thượng compares and contrasts: “In Yunnan, [China’s southern province bordering Vietnam], earthen homesteads are built adjacent to one another, like a big fortress. Homes in Vietnamese villages are not like that, each household lives in a separate house in the middle of a garden.” The garden can be defined as an outdoor zone to grow plants, display objects, or just to relish the rustic beauty of nature. Yards and gardens in Vietnam are localized in a distinctive way, suitable for the seasonal climate, soil, culture, and historical background of the region. For instance, the Vietnamese countryside is populated by wells, huge water jars, bamboo thickets, hedges made of chè tàu or hibiscus bushes — endemic wild plants from the tropical climate.
Vietnam’s courtyards are an extension to the home’s living quarters. Photo via Flicker user manhhai.
Tản mạn kiến trúc Nam Bộ (Southern Vietnamese Architecture Excursions) also pointed out that courtyards function as more than just decorative spaces, but also living spaces: “The yard is not merely a space to grow plants and flowers, but also an extended living space. Beneath the canopies of trees, people arrange rows of large ceramic jars to store water for showering and washing. Vietnamese used to shower freely and naturally right in the garden, and the act is frequently romanticized via visual and textual art forms. As natural as being, the daily routine of Vietnamese isn’t confined within four walls, but expands to the surrounding environs as well.”
The courtyards of each geographical region have distinctive characteristics of local architectural archetypes: northern Vietnam’s three-block, two-wing courtyard homes stand out with a brick yard and tall plant pots; nhà rường in Huế features dividers and small ponds; stilt houses in the highlands have stone mills and looms. In southern Vietnam, the homesteads are often surrounded by water bodies, so cầu khỉ (single-beam bridge) made of bamboo are usually present, challenging distant visitors’ balancing skills.
“The gardens, where the family grows food and interacts, have transformed into a part of the home. They are no longer just a pretty landscape, or a still-life to marvel at.”
In the Trần Anh Hùng-directed flick Mùi đu đủ xanh (The Scent of Green Papaya, 1993), the boundary between the garden and the home seems to have disappeared. The characters interact in scenes that blend between the spaces, as if there are no divisions between. Madame Ty prepares meals outside and takes them inside. The wife steps from the large chamber into the courtyard to get to smaller rooms. On sun-drenched summer days, the son sits right on the veranda to relish a good book, undisturbed by the urban chaos outside. Surrounding the distinctively Asian villa are layers of greenery, whose presence helps to open the space up while providing a sense of privacy for the musings of the people living within it.
Gardens appear often in Indochinese architecture, such as the setting of The Scent of Green Papaya.
One movie detail that accentuates this connection between the garden and the home is the window. At first, it only serves to provide viewers a glimpse into the garden, but over time, it’s no longer just a picture frame for the landscape outside, thanks to the way the characters interact with it — Mùi sits up gingerly beneath the soft film of sunlight peering through a thin veil, while outside, Madame Ty crouches amid the foliage, plucking a green papaya. She moves closer to the window and starts chatting to Mùi. At that moment, the inside and outside become one, and the scent of freshly cut papaya fills the air without any obstacle.
Mùi, as a young girl, loves observing the papaya tree by the window.
Courtyards are often spacious enough to fit several squares of scattered peanuts and corn kernels for drying on sunny days, not to mention the sprawling vines of gourds and squashes providing shade for the children to play make-believe. They are the setting for peaceful dinners and boisterous death anniversaries when relatives and neighbors gather to cook up a storm. At night, the courtyards turn into a stage for the symphony of frogs and crickets, in between the dulcet tones of grandma’s lullabies. Over generations, courtyards have witnessed decades of childhood.
Some gardens are also a place of ancestral worship, and a home to family altars. Better-off households even built altars for folk deities right in their yard, so every special occasion, like Tết, joss sticks always light up the family altar first, and then the altar to the patrons of the land, set up right in the garden.
The yard and the house, blending into one continuous, symbiotic entity, form a seamless landscape. It would be impossible to discuss the traditional Vietnamese home by separating the people from the garden, the interior from the exterior. In metropolises, houses with gardens do exist, but they seem to be more ornamental than functional.
“Vườn nhà ai ngập trong nắng ấm / An unnamed garden drenched in warm sunlight
Tỏa hương thơm hoa cỏ tràn lan / perfumed by a cascade of floral scents”
— Quốc Hưng Nguyễn Cao
When I was in my grandma’s backyard, I only wished to set foot in new horizons, but now as an adult, it seems as if my world has shrunk into a small garden, where every flower blooms in spring and every sweet fruit pops up in summer. Those growing up with the red dirt of the Central Highlands get to experience another season: coffee season. It’s a time when the “aroma” of fertilizers fill the air, in between the nutty notes of ripe coffee beans drying in the courtyard. Grandma’s courtyard is also the witness to a gaggle of kids playing without any ulterior motives, tearful hiccups during punishments by parents, and the seemingly endless afternoons waiting for my grandma to get home from the market.
A petite home in Vĩnh Long. Photo by Bùi Đình Chương via Tuổi Trẻ.
These days, the giáng hương tree has grown so large that it litters the ground with mounds of leaves and petals. My uncle wanted to chop it down, but grandma insisted on keeping it: “It’s always been there, it’s no trouble!” In my mind, it's her wish not just to preserve an old tree, but also to keep the soulful landscape of our courtyard intact.
