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Reader question: Please explain “garden variety” in this sentence: There’s charm in the backyard, but it’s still of a garden variety. My comments: In other words, common, ordinary. Even though this backyard is charming in its own way, it’s still a common and ordinary backyard, a type you can see in many other homes in the same area. That is to say the garden is pretty plain, if truth be told. The flowers and plants in the backyard are all everyday plants, varieties grown everywhere. To wit, nothing special, if we are allowed to be truly blunt about it. Garden, here as adjective is equivalent to common. In fact, the full expression is “common or garden variety”. It is, as you may guess, British in origin. Common refers to things that belong to the commons, or commoners, i.e. everybody (common language, e.g.). Commons, by the way, as in the House of Commons in contrast to the House of Lords (noblemen). This additional explanation, meanwhile, is culled from an English language usage website (English.StackExchange.com): The derivation of the phrase obviously does have something to do with gardening, or more precisely, agriculture. Its original meaning, as has already been said, relates to the type of plant, fruit or vegetable which is found frequently in gardens or on “commons”. (Historically, “commons” were the large patches of grass or woodland that ancient rural villages designated as being for the use of the community as a whole.) If such a plant is found growing in “the common or garden” it is likely to be unexceptional because of its abundance. The phrase has since come to be applied to anything that is common or unexceptional. | 
