Home Imperial : Garden design: Creating a cottage garden
You’ve seen them on jigsaw puzzles and on chocolate box lids, and now you want to create your own cottage garden. Transforming your own yard into a picture perfect Victorian scene takes a few basic design principles and a lot of plants and seeds. If you are willing and able to put in the time and effort, a cottage garden is a beautiful way to dress your home and a great encouragement to birds and insects to share your outdoor space.
Cottage gardens work best with traditional-style houses. That is not to say that a modern home cannot have a cottage garden; rather that the whole theme is based on an historic use of the garden that is intrinsically linked with small rural English homes of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the images captured by artists such as Helen Mary Elizabeth Allingham are an expression in a sanitised form of the reality of rural life during that period. The children are always rosy-cheeked and the women’s aprons unstained; a far cry from the dirt and squalor that most endured.
To recreate the cottage garden look, using Allingham’s paintings is a good place to find inspiration. In general, the cottage garden has the basic elements of: informality, abundance and tranquility. It is these elements that make a cottage garden so appealing in our modern lives. Cottage gardens are small, they do not transfer well to larger garden spaces. To start with the structural features in your garden, where you have a pathway it can be straight or gently curving, but should be of a rustic texture. Brick or gravel are the traditional materials to use, and the edges should disappear under the overhang of plants during most of the year. Stepping stones or flagstones (not concrete) can also be used. There may not always be a structural boundary to the garden, but where one exists it should be a hedge rather than a fence, with a low wooden gate for access. There should also be at least one bench to sit on, usually in a sunny spot near the entrance to the house.
Cottage gardens do not have patios, water features, or lawns. The concept of a cottage garden is one that fills every available space with productivity. The garden was the means by which many rural families either ate or starved during the winter months, so to have anything there that was not in some way useful was a frivolous waste of space. Lawns do not feed a family, or serve to keep away pests or diseases. The beds and borders in a cottage garden are very deep and wide, usually taking up all the available space with a pathway down the middle from the garden gate to the front or back door of the house. Modern cottage gardens do not need to be as productive, so the choice of flowers among the vegetables is not limited to those that complement the crops or produce edible seeds. Equally, most traditional cottage gardens would have at least one fruit tree and usually several different kinds; modern cottage gardens can include other types of tree for visual effect rather than productivity.
The plants used in a cottage garden design should be chosen for habit and flower form. Traditional English favourites such as roses (rambling and tea varieties), sweet peas (grown up cane supports), lupins, asters and delphiniums and hollyhocks are all popular choices. Modern varieties often lack scent, but compensate for that by being more weather and disease resistant. Many cottage garden plants are annuals, but perennial choices should include geraniums and aquilegia. Sunflowers are often seen in Allignham’s paintings and give height as well as a splash of bright colour to an otherwise muted pallet of pinks, whites and purples. Any plant that produces a daisy-shaped flower and forms a clump or drift during summer and early autumn can be included in the planting scheme. Aim for variations in height from the plants, with taller species towards the back of the borders and low-growing plants such as Lady’s Mantle or bergenia to edge the pathways.
With so many plants in such a small space, cottage gardens are high maintenance and require dedication from their owners. With the right care and attention however, they are hugely rewarding and drawn many appreciative comments from anyone passing by.
Learn more about this author, Silva Payne.
