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This ethnological and sociological research illustrates how family gardens give evidence of the plurality of lifestyles of the families themselves. These lifestyles are revealed both by how the space is organised and by how it is described by the gardener. The study has a heuristical function in the way it reveals the different types constitutive of this new social plurality, and an analytical function in the way it identifies the factors creating these customs. We can thus see the garden as a place where different layers of diverse cultures are sedimented one upon the other. Consequently, they support the production of consumable and exchangeable goods such as vegetables, fruit or flowers, but they also can be places of rest, relaxation and conviviality, “countryside islands”.