Cottage Gardening

Creating a Cottage Style Garden:
the design and plantings

The cottage style of gardening is a way of bringing the country into the city, and is right at home in country vistas. I've always loved this style and it has variations to suit a number of situations. First some history and definitions:
Although the English form is well-known, cottage gardening is indigenous to any culture where people had small plots of their own and a need and interest in growing stands of useful plants. The look is abundant and informal. English cottage gardens, and their American counterparts, have a profusion of plants for cutting, herbs for cooking and areas or interspersion of vegetables. Fruit trees and roses usually find a place as well.

The original makers of such gardens were hardworking people, and they were sometimes hard-pressed to make ends meet. The roses were for medicinal use rather than simply a landscape beauty, and other medicinal and household herbs were grown for usefulness. A remainder of their economy in the garden is the quality of covering every square inch of soil with something of purpose, either plant or structure or feature, without crowding or sacrificing plant health.

During the Arts and Crafts Movement of late Victorian times, the cottage gardens took on a more romantic mantle that remains to this day. Flowers are more prominent and grown for their ornamental value, and the medical uses are forgotten: remember that foxglove is digitalis and delphiniums and Valerian have strong effects! They are also gorgeous flowers with spires of graceful form and color.
Many impressionist paintings portray the beauty of the cottage garden and be sure to follow the link to Monet's garden, an extant example. While anyone who wants it may grow a cottage style, its profusion best counters the plain or quaint facades of architecture rather than sleek contemporary looks. Anyplace that looks right with lace curtains in the windows is lovely with a cottage garden.
Of course, if you want a cottage garden, you may now be interested in plants and design ideas.

"What is the secret of the cottage garden's charm? Cottage gardeners are good to their plots, and in the course of years they make them fertile ... But there is something more and it is the absence of any pretentious 'plan,' which lets the flowers tell their story to the heart." -William Robinson, 1883

Plant Material for the Cottage Garden

More plant info and inspiration

Flowers in a Cottage Garden many times are old-fashioned types and they are planted in billowing drifting groups. Think of puffy summer clouds, and wafting mists.

A LIST:

Trees: Malus- any dwarf apples, well-pruned Standard apples, crabapples, and espaliered forms.; Ornamental trees- any small to medium flowering trees, interesting forms such as the twisted forms of willow and hazelnut (corylus).
Shrubs: Roses described as shrub types, lilacs, mock oranges, viburnum carlesii, sweetshrub (calycanthus), those that grow full, can be pruned, and preferably flower.
Spire and Tall flowers: Foxgloves, delphiniums, meadowsweet, Dames Rocket, Aruncus, lilies (all forms), balloon flowers, sunflowers, hollyhocks, these give height and visual variation to the garden.
Mounds of Flowers: Phlox, dianthus (carnations), Sweet William, daisies of all kinds, iberis, columbines, lavender, marjoram, sages, calendulas, monardas, and many, many others.
Creeping and filler plants: flowers of small proportions such as campanula carpatica or pusilla, violets, pansies, herbs of thyme, parsley, sedums, many diminutive annuals such as linaria, dahlberg daisies, and others listed on my annuals page all packed in so that every inch of ground is put to good use. Remember this is a trait of the cottage garden.
Vining and Weaving plants: Essential for the loosely laced design of cottage gardens is the interweaving of climbing rose, clematis, or honeysuckle. Depending on the amount of room and strength of supports, your choice of cultivars is wide. If you have constricted space choose a climber with polite habits: Nelly Moser rather than Jackmani clematis; The Alchemist rather than Paul's Himalayan climbing rose; and Belgica rather than Hall's honeysuckle.

Viburnum carlesii profile

Garden Phlox profile

Platycodon, Balloon flower

Useful Advice for Cottage Gardens:

from various designers and writers

William Lawson, ... thought that a kitchen garden should have "comely borders" with herbs and "an abundance of roses and lavender" which "yield much profit, and comfort to the senses".

Russell Page, that doyen of twentieth-century garden designers, explained to me that as you walked from your house the garden must invite you on, you should not feel there is a clutter of plants impeding your progress. Every garden needs an open space for you to walk into, a place where you can take a deep breath, contemplate your surroundings, and enjoy the moment." -Rosemary Verey

"It is pleasant to know each one of your plants intimately because you have chosen and planted every one of them."
"Nowhere in the world is there anything like the English cottage garden. In every village and hamlet in the land, there are these little gardens, always gay and never garish, and so obviously loved. There are not so many now, alas, as those cottages of cob or brick ... are disappearing to make way for council houses and modern bungalows, but the flowers remain, flowers that have come to be known as cottage flowers because of their simple, steadfast qualities." -Margery Fish

Lilies are indispensable, in particular the beautiful Madonna lily (Lilium candidum), which seems to always grow in the traditional Cottage gardens in rows.

"A strong garden plan will always be weakened by the "liquorice- all sorts" effect caused by the one-of-this-one-of-that type of planting"
-John Brookes

Thoughts:

The path runs straight between the flowering rows,
A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom,
Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room
With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.
'T is reckless prodigality which throws
Into the night these wafts of rich perfume
Which sweep across the garden like a plume.
Over the trees a single bright star glows.
Dear garden of my childhood, here my years
Have run away like little grains of sand;
The moments of my life, its hopes and fears
Have all found utterance here, where now I stand;

My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears,
You are my home, do you not understand?
~Amy Lowell

a selection of pages on the web
Designing a Cottage Garden Best gardening Cottage Gardens Cottage Garden Society Newsletter Monet's Garden at Giverny Monet's Garden Plan Your Cottage Garden

Explore the Garden : here

or other parts of the site listed below

Cottage Garden Books

more... Cottage Garden Books and DVDs

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