Cottage garden ideas: 32 inspiring spaces and layouts
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Create height and structure at the backs of borders with busty shrubs like philadelphus, and the elegant spires of delphiniums, lupins, foxgloves and hollyhocks. At the foreground, choose pretty and fragrant perennials such as rose bushes, lavender and wild geraniums mixed with the invigorating and vibrant green of lady’s mantle. This will show off plants to their best effect if your cottage garden has paths that meander around the beds – and paths are important, too.
Opt for a natural planting scheme
This means that when spring comes they are ready to get going. Adding a few key focal points or yard art ideas to your cottage garden is important to help draw the eye, and create a gentle sense of purpose and structure, without overlapping into formality. 'As a concept, a cottage garden is hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
How to Create and Design an Easy-Care Cottage Garden
Deadhead to prolong the flowering season and cut back in the fall. No cottage garden is complete without the majestic old fashioned, fragrant clusters that make up the bright blossoms of Phlox paniculata. Fertilize once a year in the spring with a balanced flower fertilizer and also pinch the plant back, to encourage branching. You can grow it as an annual if you want to harvest the seeds. Never miss a fabulous garden or ideas on how to design your own. An annual spring application of 1-2 inches of well-rotted animal manure will insure that the plants thrive.
Add herbs and a few fruit trees
Cut it back in mid-summer to prevent it from getting too leggy and it will bloom again. I fertilize mine in the spring with manure and then mulch with cedar chips. Deadhead to promote more blooms and divide the clump every 3 years.
Think about paths and walkways
Ana Mari Bull avoids plants which are wind-pollinated as they don’t need the help of insects. She advises that double flowers, though attractive in a cottage border, should be avoided as bees can’t get into the plants and many are sterile. It is easy to control the soil mix – growing acid-loving plants, for example, when your have alkaline soil. Steps are also a wonderful way to embrace different levels in a cottage garden, and make a lovely spot to add potted plants.
Have comments or questions about our modern cottage garden design ideas? Tell us in the section below.
Arricca Elin SanSone has written about health and lifestyle topics for Prevention, Country Living, Woman's Day, and more. She’s passionate about gardening, baking, reading, and spending time with the people and dogs she loves. Once the plantings have established themselves, they will generally require minimal maintenance. Allow vines to adorn gates and fences or to simply climb over arches, arbors, or pergolas.
You’ll just need to dig holes for these then tap out of the pot and plant in the soil, says Alan Titchmarsh. Fill around them, and give them a good watering once they’re in, he advises. Growing annuals from seed isn’t tricky even for inexperienced gardeners with Titchmarsh’s advice to follow. He prepares a patch of sunny soil by raking until it’s smooth and even. Then he turns the rake over to make furrows for the seeds between around 1.3 to 0.6cm deep and 7.5cm apart. When it comes to perennials, there’s plenty to choose from but you might include scabious, which Alan advises, last for years and get bigger and bigger.
Chaos Gardening Is the Carefree Approach to Gardening Anyone Can Try - Better Homes & Gardens
Chaos Gardening Is the Carefree Approach to Gardening Anyone Can Try.
Posted: Wed, 26 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Of all garden styles, the cottage garden is one that is meant to delight and appeal to your own personal taste. Plant cabbage among the flowers or Swiss chard along the path. Do not follow "the rules." Plant whatever appeals to you—there is no ‘no’. Around the end of the eighteenth century, members of the well-to-do gentry began to idealize the cottage life and created their own version of cottage gardens. It was then that the British cottage garden was transformed into the flower-filled setting that we dream of today. Pick plants that will flop over paths, tumble from arbors and pergolas, and scramble over walls and fences.
Here I planted Clematis ‘Jackmanii’, climbing up a fence, fronted by Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’. If you’re looking for cottage garden ideas that will create the most impact, then start with the best climbing plants. There are so many varieties that can be grown upwards, and so many benefits to adding them – from covering an unsightly wall to filling the air with fragrance.
Because it self-seeds so rampantly, it is considered invasive in the Midwest. Dianthus barbatus benefit from a layer of organic compost followed by mulch. In addition, it needs fertilizing with a slow release fertilizer every 6 – 8 weeks. Note that digitalis is very toxic, so wear gloves when handling the seeds and foliage.
These plants are fairly drought tolerant and need no more than 1 inch of water weekly in the heat of summer. If you want to grow Digitalis from seeds, sow them 1-foot apart, directly on top of the soil in late summer, and water in. Foxglove is a good companion plant for hollyhock, and is also a cottage garden classic.
Vines are often used to soften hardscape features while providing visual height, additional interest, and privacy. Annuals (like pot marigolds, sweet alyssum, impatiens, poppies, snapdragons, cosmos, nasturtiums, and more) offer loads of showy color. Strong framework in the form of arbors, pergolas, gates, gazebos, or picket fencing should be implemented in order to maintain the abundant flowers and foliage. It also provides the gardener, and others, with a quiet place for reading or simply enjoying the beauty of the landscape’s design. Regardless of where it leads you in the landscape, paths are an important element in this type of design.
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