Cottage gardens: how to plan yours and 14 cottage garden ideas
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The flowers and foliage are poisonous and can cause skin irritation. Install sturdy arbors and trellises so you can train vines and climbers (particularly fragrant roses) to grow into billowy shapes against walls, next to gates, and above doorways. Weeds will also be kept at bay by the denseness of the plantings.
Designing a cottage garden: where to start
You don’t have to live in a cottage to create a beautiful sanctuary of flowers to enjoy every day. Easy-going and easy-care are what you are after when planning a cottage garden, with a mix of tough, reliable perennials and annuals, shrubs for structure, and some bulbs. You could position this cottage garden design behind a picket fence, enclosed by low hedging, or as a pretty scheme to greet visitors to your front door. A cottage garden design is ideal for the self-confessed plantaholic as it is all about making sure every piece of ground is covered in an apparently unstructured design.
Garden Design IdeasGarden Ideas, Photos and Tips for Gardening at Home
From delicate columbine to vibrant lupines and charming poppies, this list of cottage garden perennials and biennials includes a variety of colors, heights, and zones. The perfect selection of plants to fill the front, middle and back of your border. Dianthus has long been a cottage garden favorite, with frilly clove-scented flowers mainly in tones of pink, red, and white.
Old-Fashioned Favorites Garden
You can’t beat traditional climbing roses to inject a touch of charm into a cottage garden. The perfect foil to weathered brickwork and masonry, roses are essential for completing the chocolate box look. You’re likely to be planting perennials you’ll find in pots at the garden center, Titchmarsh says.
Start with just a single border
Few gardens are more pleasing to behold than an old-fashioned cottage garden. The juxtaposition of a multitude of flowers gives off a cheerful, whimsical feeling that allows gardeners a quiet sanctuary to relax and step back in time for a moment. ‘When choosing your planting scheme, make sure to include classic cottage garden plants.
Most of the old favorite flowering botanicals are sun loving. This small garden should be divided into beds joined by natural pathways. The choice of vegetables was very limited until King Charlemagne (800 AD) issued a decree that increased the types of plants grown — things like cucumbers, melons. Admittedly, most of us aren't lucky enough to live in a charming thatched cottage such as this.
Position a bird bath amongst the blooms
Add in some touches of vintage cream and set the whole thing against a neutral backdrop of green and the result will be positively painterly. As you get more confident mix in some pale greys, washed out blues and silvery foliage to add depth and complexity that will segue beautifully with your look. Today, cottage gardening is more of an ethos than a set of rules to be followed. It's about embracing nature's beauty and intricacies, rather than forcing it to conform. The beautiful, fragrant, four-petal flowers of wallflowers are loved for their easy maintenance.
Add Arbors
The beds are densely planted with aromatic flowering bushes, vines, perennials, and annuals so that no soil is visible. But it is what many of us picture when we think of a cottage style garden. The pink, purple and white blooms of phlox are another lovely choice due to the fact that they are irresistible to hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, and birds, bringing life to your cottage garden. Flash forward to today and a “cottage garden” now simply means a type of plotting many aesthetically pleasing flowers and perhaps a few herbs in a small space all jumbled together.
Deciding on the Perfect Location
The mantra right plant, right place is important in designing a cottage garden. You are working with, not against your conditions, for the healthiest, sturdiest results, with the minimum of effort. ‘This is the beautiful chocolate box image everyone has of hollyhocks, roses and color in a varied tapestry of planting that is very irregular. The use of old fashioned annuals and even the odd vegetable dotted in as well,’ says Rosy Hardy of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants.
Apple and pear trees would have been common sights in a home garden a few hundred years ago. Cider and perry were easy-to-make staple beverages, especially when clean water was difficult to come by. Plants for a Future goes on to suggest adding berry bushes, ornamental fruit trees, and nut trees, though we might suggest sticking to the more manageable dwarf varieties.
Of course no cottage garden should be without pretty spring bulbs such as tulips, daffodils and crocus; plant these in October and November for guaranteed spring color. In your cottage gardens design, there should be harmony between landscaping and the architecture of the house. These are our favorite cottage garden ideas – use them as inspiration, or just enjoy browsing. We were delighted to see that one of our favorite gardeners and broadcasters Alan Titchmarsh has been sharing his advice on how to create a cottage garden, so we've added those in, too.
Select your color palette that appeals to you and works with the architecture of your home – from soft and pastel, dreamy and romantic, to vibrant and clashing. After all your hard work in the garden, it's important to have somewhere that you can sit back and enjoy the view. An ornate metal garden bench would work well in a romantic setup – match it with a coffee table for somewhere to pop your cuppa. Avoid geometrical, rigid materials like square paving, and instead, try materials that are softer on the eye. Think, for example, a gravel path lined with reclaimed bricks that have a worn patina, or a design like this, which combines bricks with bark chippings.
'Florida-Friendly Cottage Garden' lecture Gardening - The Northwest Florida Daily News
'Florida-Friendly Cottage Garden' lecture Gardening.
Posted: Sun, 25 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The image of a resplendent, colorful garden has enticed many a homeowner to install a picket fence and a bounty of flowers in the hopes of creating such a haven. Lifestyle journalist Sarah Wilson has been writing about flowers, plants, and garden design and trends since 2015. In addition to homesandgardens.com and livingetc.com she's written for gardeningetc.com, Modern Gardens and Country Homes & Interiors magazines. When deciding how to layout a cottage garden, the trick is not to overthink it. Cottage gardens are traditionally simple and regular in layout, with a path to the door, and rectangular beds on either side packed with unrestrained planting.
The look is unpretentious and informal, and borders and containers can be filled with many plants that you can grow yourself from seed or propagate from cuttings. If you are thinking about adding roses to your cottage garden ideas, be sure you know how to plant roses and how to prune climbing roses for maximum flowers. As has already been said, the beauty of cottage garden ideas is that there are no rules. Therefore, you don't necessarily have to embrace the floral free-for-all of traditional cottage style. There are plenty of raised bed ideas that will help to bring order to your space, while still letting you indulge in the vibrant and chaotic planting of your cottage garden ideas.
Rooted in the romance of quintessential English garden ideas, cottage garden ideas are a firm favorite and can be found alongside a wide range of house styles. No two cottage gardens are the same – your cottage garden ideas will be a reflection of your own tastes as well as drawing ideas from the exterior design of your home. This is an extremely tall plant that can be up to eight feet tall when it is fully mature, which can make it a great addition to add height to your garden. It will grow well in zones three to nine, and it is fairly easy to tend to because the plant grows best in well-drained soil and full sun. Sunflowers are traditional cottage garden plant with large, sunny yellow flowers.
Find every color, size, shape, and scent that interests you, and give it a try. Different types of foliage will texturize your garden, and just think of all of the delicious fragrances you can include. Rose, honeysuckle, sweet pea, gardenia — all of these are perfect for an English cottage garden. If you like cottagecore décor, maybe it's time to let that aesthetic flow out of the house and into the garden. You can pack in as much color as you want, choose plants that self-seed and are super easy to grow, and have fun with it all. For the color a cottage garden should have, Alan Titchmarsh advises a mixture of annuals and perennials.
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