Cottage Gardening
Cottage Gardening Table of Contents
There is nothing that says you must design your garden in the cottage garden style if you live in a cold climate. Cottage gardening happens to suit my personality and lifestyle. In the subtopics you will find the information I’ve discovered as I’ve tried to figure out exactly what a cottage garden is and how I could create and maintain one with the least trouble and most enjoyment. Please let me know if you find additional resources to list here.
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. . . some gardens are more fantastic than others, and a very few are so fantastic that they seem to be more about fantasy than about gardening. Like a play within a play, these gardens comment on the nature of illusion, the mechanics of mesmerization, the mystery of why and how the simple act of cordoning off space and time can charge them so highly with meaning.
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For years I had the chance to create some of the most fun cottages gardens. I would buy run down small victorian era houses, rip out the chanlink fence and install white picket. From there is was great fun to find wonderful salvage vitorian pieces or statuary to landscape around. I almost always got carried away, but that is what sold the houses. People fell in love with the gardens from the curb. One of the best things I ever did was to put a front porch swing on every house I restored. What a great place to admire your cottage garden and wave to the passing neighbors!
Twitter: @gardnfountains
Hello Kathy,
I have been reading your blog and have drawn some really useful information from it relating to the cottage garden. My own little green space is very much in the informal cottage garden style which suits my lifestyle (being always busy) and my maintence program (never enough time to weed). For obvious reasons I also have two rather beautiful water fountains located at the front and rear of my lawns which really help to create the focal point amoungst the wild flower beds I have created. I have learned much from this site, please continue to show us the way!
Love your quotes. I also love your good illustraions. I will keep this web site in mind.
I think the cottage garden style is definitely a useful one. It allows intermixing of natives and edible. I think it is important to keep a sense of structure, repeated patterns and colors to make the garden a cohesive whole. I particularly like looking at planting done by Piet Oudolf, a European with a love for American native plants. He is a plantsman first, a designer second. He has a couple books out there.
Also there is a book titled “Heirloom Plants” I recommend.