An English cottage garden can serve many purposes - as a vegetable patch, a cutting garden, a place to sit, and a place to dine while enjoying the sights and sounds of your own backyard.
English cottage gardens is often favoured by people with plenty of time to garden, who are romantic at heart, artists or photographers as a ready source of subject matter, or by anyone who enjoys a densely planted informal mixed garden that looks natural, unstructured, filled with interesting shapes, textures, fragrances and colours from a wide variety of flowers, shrubs and herbs.
If this is the style of garden you imagine, then you have a wide variety of flowering and fragrant plants from which to choose. Some of the more commonly grown ones are:
* Roses – A favourite amongst cottage gardeners with a mix of bush, climbing, tea roses and carpet roses to choose from.
* Lavender – Along walkways, in containers or set amongst other plants.
* Old-Fashioned Flowers – Stock, Delphiniums, Violets, Asters. Verbena, Daisies, Cosmos, Pansies, Love-in-the-mist, Poppies, Foxgloves...
* Shrubs and small trees - Geraniums, Hydrangeas, Lilacs...
* Bulbs – Daffodils, Tulips, Jonquils, Gladioli...
* Ornamental Grasses
Culinary and medicinal herbs can often be found growing intermingled with the shrubs and flowers, or grown in containers ready for use by the home gardener in a number of ways:
For adding colour, texture and flavour to culinary dishes
For making herbal teas
Homemade skin care products and lotions
Homemade medicines and ointments
Along with mass plantings the English cottage garden will often include several structural features and elements within the garden setting. This could include:
A birdbath
A Sundial as a striking focal point in an informal planting
Fountain, pond or stream for the soothing and restful sound of water
Gazebo
Wishing well
Gazing Ball
Trellis or archways
Picket fences
Plants in terracotta pots or hanging baskets
Garden seating
Brick or cobblestone walkways
Sculptures and garden ornaments
Caring for Your English Cottage Garden
To keep your cottage garden looking good regular dead-heading of the spent flowers will prolong the blooming period.
Cut back the foliage of perennials to the basil foliage when it is past it's best and destroy any diseased plant material to keep your garden healthy.
Leave some flower heads for the purpose of re-seeding your garden for next years growing period. Allow plants to self-sow and intermingle removing any tree seedlings while they are small or plants that spring up in unwanted corners of the garden.
