Enclosed grounds and gardens with 園

Kanjipedia, citing Kadokawa’s Shinjigen, explains the result as その, ground planted with fruit trees or vegetables. The sound relationship belongs to the Chinese character’s formation, not to the origin of the Japanese word その. Kanjipedia, 園

CUHK gives enclosed ground for growing vegetables, fruit, and flowering plants as the original meaning. It quotes the Shuowen Jiezi definition as a place for planting fruit trees. Its older-form collection includes small-seal and bamboo or silk manuscript forms, but no oracle-bone or bronze examples. The cited Shijing poem 將仲子 asks someone not to cross the speaker’s 園 or break its trees. CUHK also cites 園 among gardens and ponds in the Shuihudi Qin manuscript 為吏之道. These provide early textual and manuscript evidence for grounds and gardens, without establishing the character’s first use. CUHK, 園

Heibonsha’s Fukyuban Jitsu agrees that 園 is phono-semantic, but proposes an original meaning of planting trees in burial grounds, drawing on funerary compounds and its interpretation of 袁. This is a competing origin hypothesis. CUHK records imperial burial-ground uses in the Shiji, but keeps cultivation as the original sense. Heibonsha, Jitsu, 園 CUHK, 園