Form and Colour Try to mix the spires of taller plants with the billowing mounds of perennials and daisies. Use some bold foliage plants; they will contrast with and highlight flowers and filmy foliage. Avoid garish hybrids and dinner plate roses and clematis; these are not what it is about. The cottage garden style is more simple flowers in profusion.
Work through your colour combinations, the clash of bold colours stimulates and creates drama, dominating the garden. Bright colours are traditional and you can use colour can bring the cottage style up to date.
One of the most famous cottage gardens, at Sissinghurst Castle, is planted in vibrant reds, yellows and orange inside a deep green yew hedge. The 'sunset colours', Vita Sackville West, its creator, called them. Always bright and glowing, even on dull overcast days, this garden is a lesson to us in the use of colour. It's your garden and your choice, so be bold.
If you use bright foliage then use it sparingly. Bright yellow or purple leaved plants can look terribly overdone and out of place. In a small garden, especially, they will overpower and dominate other plantings. Green foliage is a better foil for your cottage garden flowers.
Harmonising and complementary colours soothe and draw the eye more to the textures, form and structure of plants and the garden. But these colours can easily looked washed out, even wimpy, in our bright, clear light. Adding some deep hues in blue, wine or your main colour theme will bring some depth and substance to a pastel colour scheme.
Mix spires with billowing mounds
Brilliant colour combinations in Sissinghurst's Cottage Garden
Colour Harmonies
The use of colour is a key factor in updating the garden, and not just in vibrant flower colour but also in terms of paint colours on structures and walls. A singing orange wall, warm yellow or deep green are a few of the choices to set off the planting. The planting and background colour combinations takes the garden into a very personal realm - your own vision.
Flowers and Foliage Flowers are the main event in a cottage garden, so go all-out and cram them in. There is a wide repertoire of plants available. It's all in how you mix them. To avoid an itty-bitty and give unity repeat some plants through your border, plant in decent sized blocks of the same plant, or use similar colours. It's a cottage garden after all, and not a stamp album.
Perennials can include the spires and mounding plants, 'see through' and spiky plants. Low plants are great in edging and the front-line of the border. Peonies are classic cottage garden flowers, as are delphiniums and roses. Plants billowing over a path or low wall give a very full, cottage-y ambience.
Plants with bold, large leaves will balance the many flowers and smaller leaved plants. Large leaves pull a border or fussier plants together. Spiky, sword-like leaves create a contrast with mounds of plants and break up an otherwise monotonous scheme.
Use annuals, especially in winter, to fill temporary gaps in the planting and are wonderful mainstays of the winter garden. In summer there are almost too many annuals to name!
Climbing Plants Wisteria is a cottage garden classic. Wound along a veranda, a fence or over an arch it will reinforce your garden style.
Climbers are perfect for clambering through shrubs and up trellis or an arch, and there is something for every situation and for almost every season. Do try to stay with the smaller flowered types as the large dinner plates will dominate.
Roses and clematis are key plants in a cottage scheme but there are many beautiful tender climbers that can be grown through shrubs and over garden structures to add interest and extend the flowering season. Climbing roses and clematis are a key climbing plants for the cottage look.
Bulbs Bulbs enable you to get so much more flower power from your garden space. Underplanting and interleaving will really expand the planting.
Bulbs are very much a part of the cottage garden, tulips and daffodils in spring are almost a given. Annuals, emerging perennials and deciduous shrubs will cover dying foliage and provide shade for the bulbs.
There are many smaller bulbs that enjoy a cool climate, and lots of bulbs for the summer garden and others that will keep your garden going through autumn and into winter.
Use Herbs, Vegetables and Fruit Herbs are not only great in the kitchen they are decorative, and wonderful plants in the border. The culinary sages, rosemary, thyme and other herbs add fragrance and look great in the border.
Wisteria, a cottage classic
R. 'Albertine'
Bulbs - added flower power
Vegetables and fruit were fundamental to the traditional cottage garden. You can easily include these, but intermingle them or, without straying too far into formality, make a potager. Espaliered and trained fruit trees (pears and apples are especially suitable) will provide screens and are in keeping with your theme.
Many vegetables and fruit are obviously decorative and useful.
Introduce a New Zealand look Introduce New Zealand natives into your garden. Many are especially suited to the cottage look. The dramatic foliage and flowers of the Chatham Island Forget-me-not are a must if you have the climate and a cool, shade spot with a deep fertile soil for them. Brachyglottis 'Sunshine' is a bright addition to any garden and massed Renga lilies will add a cottage-y charm in shady corners
If you have low rainfall Drier gardens can still develop a cottage garden. The dense planting will cover the ground and reduces opportunities for soil moisture to evaporate, but it will also put more demands on available moisture to nourish plants.
Many of the suggested plants will thrive in lower rainfall areas and you can add others that will handle dry conditions and fill out your scheme.
It's Your Call Remember then that the cottage garden is far from dead and that it can look as modern as any garden style if you pay attention to the structure crucial in a small space, and so important in any garden, and update it with foliage and bold colours.
We make some planting suggestions on the next page, but the list is endless and you call the shots here.
It's up to you, your imagination and the effort you want to put in.
