How To Plant Up A Cottage Garden Border

Even if you splurge on some anchor plants like rose bushes or flowering shrubs you can temporarily fill in with less pricy plants.

How to plant up a cottage garden border. Should you have a much larger area to work with you could design garden rooms divided by taller plants and shrubs or arches of roses to pass through. A cottage garden is less expensive than its more formal counterparts. Cottage gardens are also likely to make use of self-seeding plants such as foxgloves and aquilegias which pop up spontaneously around the garden or in cracks in paving adding to the informal look.

Try to avoid tight shapes rigid patterns and straight lines. This truly jumbled garden is probably beyond most of us but mixed patches work well. The more the merrier in an English cottage garden.

Cottage gardens traditionally have plant beds by the house packed tight with plants. Look to break it up with natural-looking borders or islands of plants. There is always something in bloom.

The key to cottage garden design is to not make it look designed or formal. In the bigger gaps towards the middle and wrapping around the shrubs are Verbascum Aconitum and Cirsium. This informal crowding of a wide variety of plants is a signature feature and the mix of perennial and annual flowers with vegetable and foliage plants twining around each other and competing for attention is what makes a cottage garden so fascinating.

Transfer the shape and measurements to graph paper with one square on the graph paper equal to 1 square foot of garden space. Place roses smaller shrubs mid-sized perennials and ornamental grasses in the middle. Garden on a Roll.

Traditional border gardens typically employ British cottage garden plants. Pictured here roses foxgloves sweet Williams alliums sweet peas and phlox. 0 Plants 000.