How to Create an English Cottage Garden Design

The English cottage garden is filled with a profusion of flowers. Arbors draped with fragrant roses or clematis direct your eye to a pathway with low growing flowers reaching out, brushing your ankles as you stroll by. A bench appears ahead, partially hidden amongst tall flowers, providing a reclusive location for relaxing cup of tea. Try your hand at an English cottage garden landscape design by starting with small vignettes.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. A picket fence can provide a backdrop for flowers in your landscape design. Plant tall and/or mid-height flowers on one or both sides of the fence. A single flower variety is a good starter, but if your budget can handle it, plant two or three varieties of varying heights and colors.
   
   Try mixing yellow daily lilies or yellow black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) with midnight salvia or purple iris. As perennials, all these sun loving flowers will return every year to repeat your landscape design.

2. Choose a chair with arms and a side table or a bench with a back and arms that fits your budget and comfort. That chair/table or bench could be a wooden, wicker, metal, or even plastic. You can add to its visual impact by using a folded quilt for a seat pad and/or by using a pillow or two, leaned against the back. Just remember to bring them inside when you are finished so they don’t mildew.
   
   To create a screen of flowers around your chair or bench in your landscape design, plant any of the following sun-lovers alone or in groups: bridal wreath spirea bush (highly fragrant), ornamental grass, daily lilies, black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), yarrow, lavender (great scent!), Russian sage (blue-lavender colored flowers), rose of Sharon, butterfly bush, hollyhock (Alcea), purple coneflower (Echinacea).

3. The significance of an arbor in an English cottage garden is to create an inviting entrance. Laden with colorful flowering vines, the arbor becomes a focus point, drawing your attention. After stepping through an arbor, the garden visitor should be presented with the view of flowers, an entrance to the house, a garden pathway, and/or another garden focus, like lawn ornaments or a bird bath.
   
   There are lots of flowering vines available. Some of the popular ones include: trumpet vine, wisteria (can become heavy), morning glory, clematis, bleeding heart, moonflower.

Tips & Warnings

• Of the flowers mentioned above, not all will grow in all areas of the country and some do better in sun than in shade and vice versa. Choose flowers in your area that are similar in height and color to get you started. Your garden nursery can help you decide.

Resources

• Styles of Picket Fences

[BellaCasa]

on 5/23/2009 That sounds so lovely. I hope I have a picket fence someday, it would not work with the house or lot that we have now, but hopefully the next house!