Cottage gardens | Ottawa Start

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7 • POSTED ON July 12, 2005
Cottage gardens
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Cottage gardens are - by far - the epitome of romantic gardening. Picture this: a thatched roofed cottage surrounded by a white picket fence, birds and bees merrily hovering around an abundance of plants that never seem to stop flowering and hidden corners where you can find temporary escape from the cruel world we live in.

Our gardening column is published every Tuesday on OttawaStart. Read previous columns here.

Ah, the beauty of the cottage garden! Cottage gardens are - by far - the epitome of romantic gardening. Picture this: a thatched roofed cottage surrounded by a white picket fence, birds and bees merrily hovering around an abundance of plants that never seem to stop flowering and hidden corners where you can find temporary escape from the cruel world we live in. Does this sound like a gardener’s paradise or what? Indeed it does, as long as you like to surround yourself with as many plants as possible.

Cottage garden If you are not into this particular style of gardening, you will probably shrug your shoulders and mutter something about too many plants being crammed into not enough space, the whole thing looking rather messy and who in their right mind would put pink next to orange?

In short, my gardening friends, it is time to unravel the myths and secrets of the true cottage garden! Let me give you the good news first: there is no need to pack your bags and immigrate to the UK to indulge yourself in this romantic garden style. Kanata or The Glebe is just as well suited to host an attractive cottage garden as Cornwall or Kent - although you may have to forego the thatched roof. The bad news is that cottage gardening entails more than merely allowing 100 different plants to grow in your garden and let them take care of themselves.

In order to truly understand the origin of this gardening style, let’s take a dive into history. The cottage garden originated in 18th century England and there was nothing romantic about it. In an attempt to grow their own vegetables, herbs and plants, labourers would take seed pods and cuttings of plants from the gardens of the manor where they worked (or from hedgerows and fields) and planted them around their own – humble – cottages. In this day and age, we can only guess if this was done to improve the look of their domicile or to improve their diet, though – sceptical as I am - my money is on the diet.

plants in a cottage garden Consequently, a cottage border breaks most rules of traditional garden design. The more plants a traditional cottage gardener could get his or her hands on, the better it was. This is still reflected in a modern cottage garden.

Plants are grown very close together in an attempt to make them look as if they were put in at random without a plan or a “method behind the madness”. However, a cottage garden requires more planning than meets the eye and you will have to put in a certain amount of thought and effort - both before you start planting and while the garden is maturing. If you leave it up to plants to create a beautiful garden you can either get incredibly lucky and end up with a wonderfully natural looking garden (low odds) or you can end up facing an incredible mess (high odds).

In my humble opinion, unless you are strictly growing plants that are native to our area, the term “natural garden” is a contradiction in itself anyway. In actual fact, what we do in our modern gardens is combine plants from all over the world that happen to survive our climate. Not exactly “natural”, but boy it can look great!

So how do we create a cottage garden? As always, the first thing we need to focus on is hard landscaping: paths, patios etc. In order to create the natural look we are after, we need to abandon the idea of using concrete pavers and slabs. However, don’t lose your sense of practicality.

You will need paths that take you from A to B and if - for whatever reason - you need these paths to be smooth, then by all means use concrete pavers (elderly or disabled people would thank you for it). If you are free in your choice of paving, make the paths more frivolous: a cottage garden is all about being distracted by plants so allow yourself to be slowed down by installing narrow, winding paths. Gravel, shredded cedar or pine, and bark nuggets are cheap and easy to install surfaces that do very well in a cottage garden. To prevent weeds or seedlings from growing in your paths it is advisable to put down landscape fabric (also sold as weed block or weed barrier) first – although our 18th century friends did not have that luxury.

If you would like to stay true to the idea of an old-fashioned cottage garden, grass paths are the best choice but make sure they are wide enough for your lawn mower!

There are several ways to go about planting a garden: rows, drifts, groups or at random. Rows give a formal impression and are therefore not the greatest for a cottage garden, although you could consider planting a row of the same plants along the edge of a path or a flower bed to tie together your random collection of plants. In a cottage garden, it is better to plant in drifts or groups (at random is even better but - as explained earlier - it can be somewhat tricky).

The most common technique is to plant in groups; the tallest plants are in the back and the shortest plants in the front, so you will be able to oversee the entire border. However, to add visual interest, a bed filled with tall plants in front of the regular border works well. It not only adds depth to the composition, but it also forces you to walk around it if you want to see the rest of the garden. With all due respect, there is nothing more boring than a lawn surrounded by flower beds and nothing in the middle. Also, when laying out your garden, remember that everything has to curve; there is no such thing as straight lines (or rectangular beds) in a cottage garden.

Time for the fun part: the plants!

Although it is entirely up to you what you plant in your garden, there are plants that are associated with English cottage gardens. A bit off topic, but interesting enough to report: it is no coincidence that in my native country of The Netherlands – where you would have a hard time finding a thatched cottage – the same types of plants are used in old-fashioned farm gardens. Although technically the gardening style is different, both the English cottage garden and the Dutch farm garden originated around the same time and share a similar background. Their owners were people who did not have the resources or the time to create showpiece gardens, so whatever they planted had to look after itself (or be edible!).

All-time favourites such as Delphinium, Rudbeckia fulgida (Black-eyed Susan), Echinacea (Purple Coneflower), Euphorbia (Spurge), Achillea (Yarrow), Aquilegia (Columbine), Dianthus (Pinks), Digitalis (Foxglove), Asters and Geranium (Crane’s bill) should be topping the list of your plant purchases. Don’t forget herbs such as Rosemary, Lavender, Chives and Parsley; bulbs – Alliums (ornamental onions), Daffodils, Crocus, and Hyacinths; and annuals. You will have to be the referee of your borders; in principle, you can let all your plants grow and seed themselves freely but you will have to pull things out in order to maintain a balance.

Certain plants are more invasive than others and it is important to keep the balance; you don’t want to end up with a garden entirely made up of Chives or Yarrow (unbeknownst to you, I have purposefully mentioned Yarrow as an example of an extremely liberally self-seeding plant because my better half adores it and allows it to slowly take over our entire back garden, much to my dismay!).

To conclude this week’s column: cottage gardens are all about informality. They are a plant lover’s heaven, so feel free to use plenty of containers to add extra colour - recycling whatever you can (old metal buckets and watering cans are great!) - and make sure to always have at least two plants growing up that trellis you have lying dormant in the garage. Early-flowering clematis complements a climbing rose: by the time the clematis is done, the rose will take over – and with any luck there will be an overlap during which both plants bloom. Don’t forget to include some garden art - sculptures, figurines, bird baths and feeders, fountains - anything goes as long as it adds to the general idea of a romantic, natural garden.

One more thing before I bid my temporary farewell; earlier this week, I received a question from Sharon, who wanted to know if she could build a flower bed on top of an existing lawn without having to remove the grass. Well, Sharon, that depends on how much soil you will be putting on top of the grass (i.e. how high the bed will be). If you add a sufficient quantity of soil (5 or 6 inches), the grass will slowly deteriorate and add nutrients to the soil as it dies. However, in order to play it completely safely, I would suggest you turn it over (dig up the sod and flip it so that the actual grass faces down and the roots face up) in order to speed up deterioration.

Until next week, happy (cottage) gardening!

René Trim

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About René
René Trim was educated and trained in The Netherlands, before moving to Canada in 2000. After studying the differences in climate and season faced by Ontario gardeners he established Trim Garden Design and Rescue in May 2002. A gardener since the 1980’s, he has a wealth of knowledge and experience, a vast library of reference materials from which to draw answers to various garden situations as well as an enthusiastic and professional staff.