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.
There’s one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor’s.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, cottage garden design is so adaptable. I love its informality and especially the old-fashioned flowers and plants. It’s a great spot for heirloom rose varieties, hollyhocks or climbing vines. Your comments about randomizing are right on. It doesn’t need to look too contrived.
Lol – I attempted a cottage garden in my last house, but I bought all my plants in their infancy age, and didn’t give them enough time to grow before I sold the house.
The small plants were spaced far apart (to take into account their eventual sizes), and it looked terrible. I swore off Cottage Gardens, but I definitely realize I did it incorrectly, and have been slowly coming back to them.
So kudo’s to those that love them and are able to implement them easily. I will try again in the future.
Hi, Munawar–A good thing to do while you are waiting for perennials and shrubs to fill in is to use annuals. I like to use ones that grow well from seed in our cold climate, such as annual poppies and larkspur. I also get a lot of tall white flowering tobacco reseeding but I think I started that originally from plants. These all need to be sown quite early, before the last spring frost, so I guess the first year you should get already started plants to interplant with your perennials. When they resow randomly the second year, it will greatly contribute to that relaxed, cottage garden feel.
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!
Any chance to see pics?
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.