A little lesson in how to get an English Cottage style garden.
Skip right to the English Cottage Garden Tips.
I was walking down my street the other day on one of the rare May afternoons that didn't require wearing a wind protection helmet, and it started all kinds of awkward feelings inside of me. Not the walking around without my wind protection helmet, I was O.K. with that. I was jealous and inspired and motivated and shamed by everyone else's front lawn. Every time I turned a corner I saw another house with something my house needed. A new driveway. A coat of paint. A front yard that looked tidy. One house had a pine tree in their driveway but I don't think that was a gardening choice so much as a byproduct of the stupid wind. See? This is why we should all wear wind helmets when venturing outside on windy days.
So these yards around the neighbourhood look much better than mine. At the moment, you'd only see a yard like mine from the perspective of a news helicopter. "Yes, that's right Dan, just under our chopper is a home that looks like it's owned by a whackjob cult leader who is holding 22 hostages and 4 amputated turtles in their basement. Neighbours say they've never met the owner but are pretty sure it's a troubled person. I mean, the lawn says it all. Back to you Dan ..."
I can't be blamed for all of the mess. Well, actually I can, but let's not lay blame. 5 years ago I ripped out all of the overgrown shrubs, resodded my yard and filled the entire front yard with vegetables. You can see the disaster of ripping everything out to get it ready to make a vegetable garden yard here. You can see how nice it turned out in this post. The problem is I liked my front yard vegetable garden so much I decided to rent a 20'x20' gardening plot. Then the next year I liked THAT so much that I rented a 40'x20' gardening plot. The year after that I liked it even MORE and rented a 40'X40' plot. That's 1,600 square feet of garden space.
I didn't need my front yard vegetable garden anymore. So I planted fewer and fewer vegetables in it but didn't replace those bare spots with any plants. So in the span of 5 years my yard evolved from perfectly designed edible garden yard to kidnapper lair. Another part of the problem was pests. At my big garden I can cover everything in row cover or throw old milk crates over my melons to keep raccoons away, but when you do that in the context of a front lawn ... well ... kidnapper lair.
Get ready to call the authorities, lock your children up, avert eye contact ... this ... is my front yard today.
The black squirrel has been in that position for the past 3 months, paralyzed with fear. His squirrel sense is telling him whoever maintains this horror of a yard would surely catch, kill and stuff him if he shows any signs of life. He's right on the money.
This year I'm getting it back on track, even if it's just a quickish fix. I'll be putting in only 2 or 3 vegetables: a couple of tomato plants (one big, one cherry) and green onions. The rest of my available space will be filled with a riot of perennial and annual flowers.
Behold the side yard. Equally impressive. The rhubarb patch right beside the air conditioner is the Queen of the yard. NOTHING could kill it and every year it comes back stronger.
That air conditioner used to be hidden by a tree I had removed last fall. So I'll have to figure out something to disguise it a bit.
Gertrude Jeckyll
I'll do the yard in a Gertrude Jekyll style. If you don't happen to be up on your historic garden designers, Gertrude Jekyll pretty much invented the English cottage style garden. A casual balance to the highly structured and formal Victorian gardens. She was considered a bit of a madwoman at the time, which of course means she was a genius pioneer. Not unlike whoever invented salted caramel cookies I imagine.
I'm not starting with completely nothing. I do have a few good established perennials like Lupins, Phlox, Climbing Hydrangea, Lillies, Delphiniums and a few other things. Which are all perfect for an English Cottage garden. An English cottage garden looks a little bit wild in that it isn't perfectly symmetrical with everything lined up in a row, but really it's quite structured and well thought out according to size of plants, colour and textures. An English cottage garden for instance wouldn't have a border row of marigolds around it with a row of other flowers behind it. It's more fluid than that and more chaotic. Typically, English cottage gardens have a colour theme, a LOT of different plants and virtually no news helicopters hovering overhead.
(source unknown) For me this is too much colour but you can tell it's been boosted a bit in Photoshop by someone so in real life it might not be so riotous.
In order to get it done I've made a task list. THIS is what needs to get done.
Table of Contents
Task List
Weed control - holy crap - get rid of the weeds. I'll be using the weed rod from Lee Valley.
Edge the lawn.
Reseed and fertilize lawn.
Get rid of dead, overgrown or otherwise ugly plants (I'm talking to you sage bush)
Plant perennials and annuals of varying heights.
Mulch, mulch, mulch.
Sounds easy right? Yeah. That's what I think too. Which means it'll probably end up taking me half the summer.
Elements of an English Cottage Garden
- Structures are needed to evoke the feeling of an English cottage garden. Trellises, picket fences, stone fences, pathways and benches.
- Lows and Highs. An English cottage garden gives the impression of rolling hills with high and low points to plantings. Make sure you have climbers too for a real English Cottage garden feel.
- Close plantings. There isn't a lot of room between plantings in an English cottage garden but that doesn't mean overgrown. You have to maintain and trim plants to keep within their boundaries so the look doesn't go from controlled chaos to unattended.
- Blooms. Pay attention to the bloom time. You don't want a garden that's in complete bloom for 3 weeks and then nothing for the rest of the summer.
Flowers in the English Cottage Garden
-
- Lupin
- Delphinium
- Roses ( I will not do roses again. I used to have an entire yard filled with roses and one by one they died due to whatever. The ones that insisted on living only did so for the first month of summer at which point they promptly lost all their leaves to black spot leaving a thorny ball of anger for the remaining 4 months of the season)
- Lavender
- Phlox
- Hollyhock
- Peony
- Dianthus
- Herbs
- Snapdragons
- Lady's Mantle
- Columbine
- Foxglove
- Heliotrope
- Cosmos
CLIMBERS
- Sweet Peas
- Clematis
- Morning Glory
- Wisteria
- Scarlet Runner Beans
In truth, my plan is to have this done in 2 weekends, which providing the winds allow me to venture outside, should be doable. In fact, even if it is windy I'll just put on my wind helmet and march onward. It'll make gardening a little less pleasant (it's quite unpleasant being whacked in the face by garbage cans and air borne toddlers who have lost the grip of their mother's hand), but this is gardening where you have to be strong if you want to survive. I'm no delicate rose.
I'm a rhubarb patch.
Have a good weekend!
→Hey there! GET MY POSTS emailed to you 3 times a week←
I highly recommend the English cottage garden - which mine might meet the description - it is mainly perennials with the occasional potted succulent and annual. I find that since the plantings are so close together that the maintenance is next to nothing. Plus then I can jam in alot of plants, so there is something blooming each month.!
(Attached is a pic of my front door bed.)
Wasn't going to weigh in with this because you seemed resolved to No roses...but a later comment suggested you Might be open if the right one came along... I think Jane is right about the Morden Manitoba roses. They are also known as the Explorer series as they're named after, um, you guessed it, exploreres. My dark pink John Cabot rose did fabulously well for 10 years (intertwined with a purple clematis) reaching up and over a pergola (full sun) here in my Zone 5b garden on the shore of Lake Simcoe. When I moved to an apartment, I bought another and put one in a pot (one of those big copper wash buckets really) on my north-west facing balcony (so only partial sun) and it's been going great for 3+ years now with 6' of growth and nothing special in terms of care except water and compost. No problems at all and masses of blooms and rosehips when I let them develop. They're built for our winters and laugh in the face of snow, ice, wind and our other big problems - freeze/thaw cycles. Highly recommended if you want to give roses another go.
Still, looking forward to see what you do! Happy gardening.
Oh - one more suggestion - sweet autumn clematis - flowers allover with masses of tiny white flowers in late late summer/autumn - a glorious vine with beautiful flowers at a time when everything else vertical is done.
AMPUTATED TURTLES???
I totally approve of your plant list! I do have some other suggestions if they generally grow well in your zone: moon flower vine (climber that blooms at night and smells great), nasturtiums which are edible and good for both you and your chickens, chinese yard long beans which are climbers and 2 beans give you a whole meal. I will be growing yard long beans on my coop this year to give the chickens a little extra shade. I also plant members of the mint family in pots around my chicken coops as they help repel insects (mint, lemon balm, cat nip / cat mint).
Apparently I have been working toward an English Cottage garden for the last few years, with no real plan to do so. I just have really poor impulse control when plant shopping, a feeling that more is always better and an overwhelming love for old fashioned flowers.
I love an English cottage garden, I have a tri level brick Spanish style home on 2 acres surrounded by woods house has black hand wrought iron accents, so I will garden vicariously through you. I can't wait to see it.
Your front lawn proves that you REALLY are a human, and not the original Goddess of the Home whose true name has been lost to history.
OMG, there is hope for us mortals.
Please keep us updated with daily photos. It would give us courage.
I love English cottage gardens. My husband, not so much--he thinks they look cluttered and untidy. *eye roll* We live in suburbia and our flower beds are so boring--day lillies, hostas, irises, salvia, and some (admittedly great) purple geraniums, all in no particular plan, planted by the previous owners. Oh, and with empty spots where the various rose bushes have died (roses are a challenge in North Iowa). I want to redo our flower beds but I am just so overwhelmed by the idea of figuring out what to plant and where.
I have always tried to have an English Garden theme. Somehow it never does what I want it to do, but every year I try again. I can't wait to see the outcome of yours.
Task List for English Cottage Garden (Alternate Method)
Meet English Royal Prince, and convince him to fall in love with me.
Plan wedding that will captivate the entire world, and require North American television coverage to begin @ 4 am. Optional, create brouhaha over who will escort me down aisle.
Have prince's Granny gift us with "cottage," i.e. small palace as wedding present, complete with platoon of Royal Gardeners to maintain the place.
This all might a little longer than a couple of weekends.
I disagree. I think I can get that done in exactly 2 weekends. Here we go. Wish me luck! ~ karen
Taking time out of course for the Christie Show this coming weekend! :)
Yep! ~ karen
(as an aside I might have to branch out to other lesser known countries for a suitable Prince. Like Listeria. Is there a country called Listeria? I think I might find a prince willing to take me from there) ~ karen!
You are brave to show the after pics of the perfect garden that are actually the before pics for your new garden, which will look amazing! The black squirrels have been nuts this year. I had one in my attic that wouldn't leave. They are digging up my lawn. I think I have grubs. Remember the Ancaster Horticultural plant sale is this Sat.
I *know* I have grubs, lol! Nematodes to the rescue in a couple of weeks. ~ karen!
:) What a fun read to start the day! More on the evolution of the front garden, please!
Morning glories and wisteria are the plant versions of a pyramid scheme. But if you plant them in a hole while still in a bucket the can be contained. Too much work for me. But then again, I tie my poorly placed shrubs to the back of a truck and drag them out of the ground to transplant. If they die they are too high maintenance.
Lavender, lambs ears, dill, bergamot, and thyme. No watering, attracts butterflies. Gardenias in pots at the doors. A bottle tree. Stella Cherry. Sassafras. Poppies.
Maybe it would be nice to get all the starting from friends and family so that each plant has a history. Sort of a memory garden.
That is a good idea! My neighbours (as I mentioned) have nice gardens. Maybe I"ll see if they're splitting this year. ~ karen
Weed Rod ... so good to know you have one you like! Is it the Lee Valley Dandelion Digger, or Grampa's Weeder? These are the only two weeders in the LV catalogue that have long handles/rods.
Karen, you are a brilliant writer and a genius 'doer'. So grateful that you are willing to pass your vast cache of useful info on to the rest of us.
Hi marilyn! It's the water based one from Lee Valley. So whichever that one is. :) ~ karen!
OK, thanks! I saw that in the catalogue, water-powered weeder, but I didn't think it was an option.
Now that I read about it, I can see it is a genius way to extract the entire root system.
Must give this a try!
I don't disagree you need to get at those dandelions. Personally I find it very satisfying digging up those little ______ (fill in the blank) by the roots.
I look forward to seeing the Cottagey result.
Lee Valley has a water-powered weeder. Would be fun to use on a warm day as you might get wet.
Composted manure
I'll be amending with my composted chicken manure. :) If I need more I'll use sheep. ~ karen!
Thanks for making me laugh this morning. Good luck with your new garden. Something tells me you're going to get carried away with it. (Which is what we all love about you, of course.) Go easy on yourself, internet friend.
I'm not good at going easy, lol. It's not my natural state of being. ~ karen!
I read a really nice book called, “A Garden from 100 packets of Seed”. by James Fenton. The basic premis is to choose and plant flower seeds, kind of the way we do with our vegetable gardens. It inspired me to just pick some flower seeds that I like and throw them in to fill some gaps :) Goodluck with your project :)
You are way smarter than I Karen but reconsider the sweet peas!
I planted some about 8 years back from seed. They were stunning. The grew like crazy and flowered like the world would end that fall. The next spring, their seedlings were every where. In the patio cracks and through out the garden.
The following spring I decided to get rid of them. It took forever to pull the tap roots. Had to use vice grips they were so deep and strong. For the next five years seedlings appeared. Had to get them all before the roots became too strong. Even this year there were a few seedlings!
A more nicer plant can't be seen but their beauty is based in evil.
Or maybe I'm a terrible gardener.
Hi LeeAnne! I have perennial sweet peas already. :) I've had them for years. You're right that they do have tap roots, but I haven't had a problem with them popping up everywhere. The odd one comes up but not too many. NOTHING like the trumpet vine I once had (which truly should be banned). Maybe you're a BETTER gardener than me and that's why you had so many sweet peas, lol. ~ karen!
Perennial sweet peas? Whaaaattt? Where do I get those? I plant a couple packets of annuals every year and get a couple sprouts.
Ugh. They are so fussy in Calgary! The morning glorys however come up happily everywhere....so now they are my favourite. BTW, my stoopid climbing rose is coming out this year as well. To be replaced with???? Clematis??
Trumpet Vine - should be known as Satan's plant. Can not be killed...
Nope it cannot. It's UNREAL. ~ karen!