The cottage garden concept has evolved into the rural idyll we picture today: a garden bursting with colorful, blowsy blooms, all growing in an apparently glorious muddle. This garden design style has come a long way from its origins of British peasants planting around their humble dwellings to supply the family with food and medicine.
Typically, the cottage garden surrounds a quaint home adorned in scented roses and climbers. It is a confined space with no lawn, intersected by paths. However, whether you want to evoke a chocolate-box image or draw on elements of the flower-filled cottage style in a border, the appeal is popular with country and urban dwellers of any garden size.
Where to Start
Cottage gardens are romantic, relaxed, free-flowering, and fun. You can plant them in pastel tones or brighter hues you love. Part of the ethos of a cottage garden is imbuing it with your personality. There are no rules. Just plant what you love to create a garden that appeals to you.
Start small so that it doesn't get out of control. Learn how to keep the plants fed and looking abundant, then gradually increase the size. As with all gardening, make sure the soil is good, rich in organic matter, and that the plants you choose suit your conditions and perform well.
Generally, cottage gardens suit sunny rather than shady spots. Beyond the visual appeal, you get the bonus of biodiversity, with plants less likely to suffer from diseases and pests thanks to the wide choice available and wide varieties that attract beneficial insects and wildlife to your garden.
This is not, however, a low-maintenance style. Keeping a cottage garden blooming takes effort. You will be kept very busy mulching, watering, feeding, deadheading, cutting back, dividing, planting, and tweaking the design.
Planting a Cottage Garden
Although cottage gardens look haphazard, you still need to plan the effect. Aim for a succession of blooms that creates a tapestry of color. The best plants to use are simple varieties that haven't been overly bred, perform well, and are tough and reliable.
Think old-fashioned favorites, including Geraniums, roses, and foxgloves, to create an informal, casual atmosphere, and plant them close together, ignoring standard spacing. Let plants flop over and weave through each other. Voluptuous, effervescent, fragrant, and self-seeding choices will help you create the look. Multi-petaled flowers will give that romantic feel, such as blowsy peonies and old roses.
Choosing Plants
You don't need to stick to only authentic plants, though, as a colorful mix of bulbs, perennials, annuals, and flowering shrubs will create a year-round look with more structure.
Consider the height and spread of the plants. Although the usual arrangement is to put the tallest plants at the back and the shortest at the front, why not try some taller plants in the middle? Climbers scrambling up supports give background and can also be used among the profusion of rustic obelisks. At the same time, perennials, such as Delphiniums, Aquilegia, Phlox, and pinks planted in clumps, are the backbone, popping up year after year.
Traditionally, hollyhocks were planted against the cottage wall; as before, houses had damp courses. The plants helped draw moisture out of the wall and keep the foundations dry. Today, they immediately give a cottage garden feel, whether against the wall or towering out of a border.
Sow easy-to-grow long-lasting annuals and wildflowers, including Calendula, cornflowers, Nigella, and biennial foxgloves, to fill any gaps. Over time, self-seeding plants will pop up randomly in unexpected spots, giving the design an interwoven lightness and artlessness.
Include some evergreens among the herbaceous plants in your cottage garden design for winter interest, and, for a nod to the past, incorporate edibles. Use step-over apples as boundaries, chives to edge paths, medicinal and aromatic herbs interspersed, or chard nestled among the flowers.
Features and Structures
Landscaping should harmonize with the house's architecture. Use materials that match the look, such as weathered bricks, flagstone, wood chips, gravel, or stepping stones, for paths and paving. Let paths meander, avoiding straight lines or defined patterns, and soften them with billowing plants that spill over and blur the edges. Alchemilla mollis or Erigeron work well along path edges.
Consider enclosing a small cottage garden with traditional fencing, such as shabby chic painted timber pickets, woven willow, or recycled timbers, to set off the effect and order the visual effervescence. Tall structures, including arbors, pergolas, obelisks, or trellis, can support roses, honeysuckle, Wisteria, jasmine, and other scented climbers, while traditional, weathered benches can help to divide the garden into rooms.
Finally, add a touch of whimsy with decorative items as focal points, such as antique watering cans, old tools, flower-clothed obelisks, or sundials – but use restraint not to complicate the scene you are creating.
Source: periodliving.co.uk
Links
- Plantpedia: Browse flowering plants by Scientific Name, Common Name, Genus, Family, USDA Hardiness Zone, or Origin