Create your own cottage garden

If you’re looking for an exciting project, build your own cottage garden

By its very nature, a cottage garden is a relaxing place that allows you to unwind. Not only reserved for the countryside, it can soften any modern city building. Here's how to turn your outside space into a wonderful jumble of flowers, vegetables, herbs and fruit, jostling in a joyful celebration of colour, texture and productivity. Just sit back and admire the view.

 

Get the cottage garden look

A good ground plan makes for a good garden design - choose the hard landscaping features of your garden before the plants.

 

Typical features include high structures such as walls, trellises and obelisks to enclose your own little plant world.

 

Practical paths lead from the back door to the shed or greenhouse, while more frivolous curved paths add character.

 
Traditional materials for paths include gravel, which is cheap and easy to lay, and brick, which adds warmth and charm.

 

 

How to plant for success

Mass flowers, herbs and vegetables together rather than splitting them up into separate areas. Avoid formality by planting flowers and foliage in clusters rather than in rows.

 

Don't worry so much about height - you don't have to slavishly plant all the tall plants in the back of your borders when you're designing a cottage garden. Dotted here and there, tall growers, such as hollyhocks, can add impact and excitement.

 

If heavily planted, the cottage garden requires little maintenance. In an established garden, you won't have to cut down flower spikes when flowering is over, as the birds will eat the seeds (plus, you want some to self-seed).

 

Tie the garden to the house by adding climbing roses round the door. and entwine honeysuckle through hedges, or train it to grow through trees.

 

Grow herbs by your kitchen door in pots and tubs, and vegetables in borders with companion plants such as pot marigolds, which act as
a deterrent to pests.

 

 

 

What to plant

The idea of a cottage garden is that it looks natural, with great swathes of plants throughout rather than just one or two of each variety dotted about.

 

Many cottage gardens include herbs - used for cooking and medicinal purposes. And, vegetables are mixed into flower borders - this is a fantastic way to grow your own produce in a small space.

 

Although native plants such as foxgloves often feature, many cottage garden favourites are, in fact, imports. Mediterranean Antirrhinum ‘Trumpet Serenade', sweet peas from Sicily and love-in-a-mist from North Africa, among others, have been absorbed into our domestic gardens and have become part of the popular palette.

 

Plants should be so tightly packed that not an inch of ground can be seen. And self-seeding should be actively encouraged.

 

Plug any gaps with colourful annuals such as snapdragons, poppies and cornflowers, grown from packets of seed. Keep costs low by trading cuttings and seedlings with your friends and family.

 

Relax into your planting. Forget about being tasteful - instead, embrace the hugely liberating feeling of planting anarchically.

 

You're bound to make mistakes, but plants are easily moved when young. It will also increase your gardening knowledge.

 

Discover the top 10 cottage garden classic plants

 

 

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