Learn Hardcore Croatian: Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred kuće. - Her grandmother has a small garden in front of the house.

Njena is the shorter/colloquial form and is very common in everyday speech.
Njezina is the longer/standard form, often considered a bit more formal or careful.

You can safely use njena in most contexts; you’ll see njezina more often in formal writing or when people speak very carefully.

Why is vrt (garden) not visibly in the accusative if it is the object of ima?

Grammatically, vrt is in the accusative as the direct object of ima (has).

However, for inanimate masculine nouns like vrt, the nominative and accusative forms are identical in the singular:

nominative singular: vrt
accusative singular: vrt

So the sentence
Njena baka ima mali vrt.
has:

subject: baka (nominative)
verb: ima
direct object: vrt (accusative form, same as nominative in this case)

You only see a clear difference with animate masculine nouns (like people), where the accusative = genitive:

nominative: vidim brat (wrong) → brat
accusative: vidim brata (correct)

Why is it mali vrt and not mala or malo vrt?

The adjective mali (small) must agree with vrt in:

gender: masculine
number: singular
case: accusative (here same as nominative)

The noun vrt is masculine, so the correct masculine form is:

mali vrt – small garden

The other forms are:

mala – feminine singular (e.g. mala kuća – a small house)
malo – neuter singular (e.g. malo selo – a small village)

So mala vrt or malo vrt would be ungrammatical because of gender mismatch.

What case is kuće in ispred kuće, and why do we use that case?

In ispred kuće, the word kuće is in the genitive singular of kuća (house).

The reason: the preposition ispred (in front of) always takes the genitive case.

So:

nominative: kuća – the house
genitive: kuće – of the house

With ispred:

ispred kuće – in front of the house
ispred škole – in front of the school
ispred crkve – in front of the church

Any noun after ispred will be in the genitive.

Could I say pred kućom instead of ispred kuće? Is there a difference?

Yes, you can say pred kućom, and it’s also correct, but there are two changes:

The preposition:
- ispred = in front of
- pred = in front of / before
The case:
- ispred → genitive: ispred kuće
- pred → usually instrumental for position: pred kućom

Both:

Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred kuće.
Njena baka ima mali vrt pred kućom.

mean essentially the same: Her grandmother has a small garden in front of the house.

Ispred kuće sounds a bit more explicit/neutral. Pred kućom may sound a bit shorter or more colloquial in some regions, and pred is also used in other meanings like before (in time or order).

Why is there no word for “a” or “the” in this sentence?

Croatian has no articles like English a/an or the.

So:

mali vrt can mean a small garden or the small garden, depending on context.
kuće can refer to a house or the house in context.

The sentence:

Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred kuće.

can be translated as:

Her grandmother has a small garden in front of the house.
or, in a more neutral way:
Her grandmother has a small garden in front of a house.

The definiteness or indefiniteness (a / the) is understood from context, not from a specific word.

Can the word order change? For example, is Njena baka ima vrt mali ispred kuće correct?

Word order in Croatian is more flexible than in English, but not anything goes.

Your version Njena baka ima vrt mali ispred kuće sounds wrong/ungrammatical in standard Croatian.

Natural variants would be:

Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred kuće. (neutral)
Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred kuće. (stress can shift in speech)
Mali vrt ispred kuće ima njena baka. (marked, emphasizes mali vrt ispred kuće)

General guidelines:

The basic order is Subject – Verb – Object – Adverbial:
Njena baka (S) ima (V) mali vrt (O) ispred kuće (adverbial of place).
Adjectives usually come before the noun they modify: mali vrt, not vrt mali in neutral speech.

Does njena always mean “her”, or can it also mean “his” in some contexts?

Njena specifically means her (3rd person singular feminine possessor).

Compare:

njena baka – her grandmother
njegova baka – his grandmother

Unlike English, Croatian marks the gender of the possessor:

njena → she owns it
njegova → he owns it

Context will tell you who “she” is, but njena never refers to a male possessor.

How would I say “in front of her house” instead of “in front of the house”?

You would usually use the reflexive possessive adjective svoj to show it belongs to the subject:

Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred svoje kuće.
– Her grandmother has a small garden in front of her (own) house.

Here:

svoje kuće = genitive singular feminine of svoj
- kuća, agreeing with baka (the subject).

You can say:

ispred njezine kuće / ispred njene kuće – in front of her house

but ispred svoje kuće is preferred when the owner is the subject of the sentence.

What is the infinitive form of ima, and is it always used for “have/has”?

The infinitive form is imati – to have.

The verb imati is the standard verb for have/has in the sense of possessing:

Imam auto. – I have a car.
On ima psa. – He has a dog.
Njena baka ima mali vrt. – Her grandmother has a small garden.

It’s also used in some idiomatic expressions (e.g. imam vremena – I have time), but you would not use it for all English uses of “have” (like auxiliary have in “have done”, where Croatian usually uses biti + participle: sam radio, etc.).

Is vrt the only word for “garden”, or are there other common words?

Vrt is the standard Croatian word for garden.

There are other words used regionally or with slightly different nuances:

bašta – common in parts of Croatia (more typical for Serbian/Bosnian standard), often means vegetable garden or yard in some dialects.
dvorište – usually yard/courtyard, the open area around the house, not necessarily cultivated as a garden.

In neutral standard Croatian, vrt is the safest word to use for garden in a sentence like:

Njena baka ima mali vrt ispred kuće.