18 Best Cottage Garden Ideas for a Picture-Perfect Space
Spruce up your home space with an extra-classic cottage garden!
If you're looking for a low-maintenance garden design that looks lovely, you may want to try a cottage garden style.
Cottage gardens are all about creating a natural look and feel. You will need to do some planning and design, though the goal is to make it feel a little haphazard and wild.
A successful cottage garden uses a myriad of plants, including flowers, herbs, vines, and shrubs to provide varying height, shapes and colors, along with useful structures to add dimension, texture and charm.
What is the difference between an English garden and a cottage garden?
Cottage gardens and English gardens often have structural components, such as paths, trellises, and walls to create the garden space.
English gardens tend to be more traditional and structured with uniform raised beds, linear plantings and sculptural elements. Cottage gardens focus on beauty and function but involve more whimsy and wildness.
What plants are good for cottage gardens?
Cottage gardens rely on a variety of plants including flowers, shrubs, climbing vines, herbs, and vegetables. You'll find plenty of classic flowers that are favorites among gardeners. Here's a list (click for growing guides).
Pay attention to bloom times and plant accordingly, so you have blooms throughout the seasons rather than just during specific months. Not only will you enjoy seeing and smelling the flowers, pollinators will thank you for having a buffet of flowers year-round.
Find More Cottage and English Garden Ideas Here:
Add an Arbor
An arbor adds an architectural aspect to a cottage garden by creating a visually pleasing element, along with height and texture.
Include a Garden Bench
Create a welcoming place to sit down and unwind in your peaceful and relaxing cottage garden. A wooden garden bench gives you space to stretch out or look out at all the beauty with company.
RELATED: 22 Creative DIY Bench Ideas to Add to Your Garden This Year
Lay a Path
Take a note from the lush, colorful garden at the former home of decorum-minded Emily Post and add a casual walkway between rows of flowers. Here, randomly laid bricks that have been allowed to patina over time add to the cottage garden charm.
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Attract Birds with a Birdbath
Invite feathered friends for a drink and a place to bathe by adding a stone bird bath among tall growing flowers, such as white and purple coneflower.
Create Movement with a Water Fountain
A water fountain offers a calming element to your garden while also enticing pollinators and birds to have a place to drink water or bathe. The size and depth of the fountain will influence whether pollinators can use it.
RELATED: 17 DIY Water Fountain Ideas
Create a Focal Point
Add height and dimension with an arbor to your cottage garden. Arbors provide vertical space for plants to climb. They also create a centerpiece by highlighting an area and dividing the space, such as creating two different sections of lawn.
Grow climbing plants such as Clematis, Hydrangea, Petunias, and Zinnias.
RELATED: 20 Flowering Vines to Add Vertical Color to Your Garden
Grow an Array of Blooms
Growing flowers in various heights, colors and shapes creates a stunning cottage garden scape.
This will also attract beneficial insects and pollinators, such as bees, butterflies and moths to the garden. Consider ladybird red poppies and masterwort (astrantia) flowers, as seen in the photo.
RELATED: How to Plant a Pollinator Garden
Grow Herbs in Pots
A cottage garden is all about growing an array of plants, whether they're flowers, bushes, grasses, or edible herbs and veggies.
Grow favorites that tend to spread, like mint and sage in containers.
RELATED: 55 Favorite Container Plants and Ideas for Your Potted Garden Oasis
Incorporate a Pergola
Have a pergola in your backyard? This wooden structure is an important element in a cottage garden–creating height, stability and a place for vining plants, such as these varying hues of climbing roses to use as a trellis and foxgloves in the forefront.
Plant Along a Picket Fence
Plant climbing roses along a picket fence to create structure while providing a place for the trailing vines to grow and expand. This is a great example of a cottage garden combining an architectural component while letting plants grow freely to create a whimsical look
Cover the Soil
Planting with a lot of flowers is a good way to ensure that soil isn't left bare where weeds or unwanted plants will likely crop up. Consider sunflowers and zinnias, along with a native grass for your region or a ground cover to keep the soil covered.
RELATED: 25 Best Ground Cover Flowers for Backyard Bald Spots
Make a Statement with a Stone Planter
Want to make a statement in the garden and create height and texture? Fill up a stone planter with small flowers or herbs.
Mix Annuals and Perennials
A cottage garden combines an array of plants, so consider growing annuals and perennials. Annuals you'll plant each year while perennials will keep cropping up when the right conditions occur.
RELATED: What's the Difference Between Annuals and Perennials?
Plant Around a Rustic Gate
An older wooden gate can add charm and character to your cottage garden. Plant flowers of varying colors and heights to create a natural feel to the space.
Plant in Painted Pots
Cottage gardens are about bright tones and adding playful themes, such as painted pots. Whether you have plenty of garden space or not, growing some flowers in containers will add splashes of color to the garden.
RELATED: 23 Seriously Creative Ways to Spruce Up a Flower Pot
Play with Texture
A common aspect in a cottage garden is looking wild while still being contained and under control.
Incorporating a metal gate that looks like rope adds a nice texture and balances out the haphazard with some structure
Step It Up with Stairs
Have stone or wooden stairs in your landscape? Cottage gardens are about using what's in your landscape so plant alongside them.
If native to your region, consider planting (as viewed in photo) Blue Oat Grass, California Poppies, Blue Flax, or Fireweed, and ground covers.
Take a Seat to Unwind
Create a space to chill out and admire all your blooms. Choosing a bright-hued chair adds color and vibrancy to the garden.
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