An English Cottage garden isn't something you can whip up in a month. The charm of a true English Cottage garden is that it looks like it's been that way for decades. Possibly centuries. And it takes just about that long to actually achieve. ;)
After years of growing only vegetables in my front yard, this spring I decided to rethink the yard. With 1,600 square feet of vegetables in my community garden and my habit of only eating 17 or 18 meals a day - I knew I didn't need any more vegetables.
This freed up my entire front yard and created a burst of excitement the likes of which I haven't had since discovering pillow case sized bags of potato chips at Costco.
Then came the anxiety. The likes of which I haven't had since discovering pillow case sized bags of potato chips at Costco.
An English cottage garden is the kind of thing that looks really easy to achieve because it's so casual and free flowing, but just like perfectly tousled-I'm-so-sexy-just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, it actually looks best when done by the hands of a professional.
For the amateur of anything, perfect is easy - imperfect is hard.
Take a bedroom. You go to a store buy an entire bedroom suite (cause maybe this is 1952) and you stick it in your bedroom like Lego. Bed in the centre, matching end tables on either side and a dresser on the long wall. Done in a day.
Trying to decorate a bedroom with mismatched furniture that didn't come as a set and still have it look great is HARD. It's more time consuming, more annoying and more difficult to get right.
Both bedrooms will end up nice but one will get your bedroom in your local paper while the other will get you it into Architectural Digest. Hypothetically speaking of course. Because people in Architectural Digest don't have bedrooms they have sensory deprivation sleeping pods only accessible by boat.
So I was anxious about trying to create a perfectly imperfect garden. I have most of the elements I want but it's still a bit awkward. It's young though. It'll grow into its looks.
I was lucky enough to buy a house with a white picket fence, which is English Cottage Garden 101. Picket, cast iron or privet fence.
Things should be wild, unmatching but controlled choas. It shouldn't feel like a woodchuck is going to dart out from under a bush and eat one of your toes.
Along the fence at the side of my house I have a few perennial sweet pea bushes (one white, two purple), a few masses of phlox and daylily. Technically I shouldn't have daylily in the English cottage garden because they aren't very English at all. They're North American by way of Asia. But for now they serve the purpose of filling in space until other more English plants can be grown and split.
The front across the house has two espaliers on either side of my path which again isn't very English cottage garden because of the symmetry but it still works.
I pulled out some massive herb bushes like sage and an old lavender but left the oregano and thyme bushes. I hacked them back into submission and they work well.
These perennial sweet peas were one of the few things I didn't rip out several years ago when I turned my front yard into a vegetable garden. They bloom from the beginning of July until into September and make the most perfect, long lasting little bouquets.
Picking up on the purple of the perennial sweet peas, I repeated the colour throughout the garden with lavender ...
Hydrangeas ...
Mini phlox ...
and a blue/purple Delphinium.
Plus I couldn't completely abandon vegetables so every so often you'll see some celery stuck in the beds. You can see a bit of celery trying to escape from under the left side of the lavender.
My apples have been decondomed for the time being because it's been SO hot here that they were starting to actually burn in the plastic bags. I like baked apples and all, but this didn't seem to be the right way to go about them.
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The foreground of this photo is the thyme with little white flowers over it.
Cockcomb are tucked in different areas.
If I had to pick one flower to represent the English Cottage Garden for me it would be Hollyhock. I love how I'm making all these grand statements about English Cottage Gardens and yet, have never even been to England. It's like a Muslim trying to give guidance on how to roast a pig.
Also scattered through the garden are snapdragons. I grew a bunch this spring, plus tons of them sprouted up from last year's snapdragons in the garden so I transplanted some of them into empty areas in the garden. Of which there are many.
It's going to take years for it to properly fill in.
Taking up one major hunk of the garden is my milkweed patch which blends in perfectly with the rest of the garden. Even if it didn't I'd keep it because I like my Monarchs.
I'm always befuddled (that's a word I'm going to use more now that I have an English Cottage Garden) when people tell me they have no luck growing cilantro. I planted it once. I will never EVER get rid of it. As in, even if I tried my hardest I couldn't obliterate it if I had a Tommy gun, a body burying shovel and a pinkie ring. It pops up everywhere year after year.
I knew I needed some sort of structural element so I decided on a bird bath. I got this old cast iron one at a local auction for around $40. Of course it isn't filled with water at this moment in time but usually it is.
And because like I said before, I just couldn't completely abandon vegetables. The espaliered tomato plant. One of three in the front yard actually.
This particular tomato plant is Candyland, which births hundreds of small, currant sized tomatoes. It's an indeterminate tomato plant, which means it'll keep growing taller and taller until the frost kills it. So by the end of the summer, it should be well up the side of my house by around 9 feet.
Growing up the trellis on the side of my porch is another tomato, this one a cherry tomato called Sungold that is also espaliered with the string method.
There are very definite gaps which still need to be filled in with something other than natural cedar mulch and fallen flower petals but things will get bigger over the years and fill in. Plus other plants will get big enough to split and replant. I think. I hope. Vegetables were so much easier.
I missed a bag on the apple trees. Did you spot it? Or are you stupid, like me?
You might recognize the window boxes on the side of the house from a post I did a few years ago on How to Build a Window Box. Actually, the title of the post was "Hey, Lady! You Know You Can Buy Those, Right?".
MASSIVE yellow daylily plants doing their daylily thing. I'm assuming you all know that a Daylily is called a Daylily because each bloom only lasts for one day. But if you didn't know, SURPRISE! It's true.
The brick path up to the house is uneven and bit hard to walk on and made from the original bricks from the house. I'll never change it.
Full List of Plants
In My English Cottage Garden.
Flowers in the garden
Cockscomb
Daylily
Dahlias
Delphinium
Dianthus
Hyacinths
Hydrangea
Hollyhock
Lavender (French & English)
Lupins
Milkweed
Phlox
Purrsian Blue Catmint
Roses
Snapdragons
Sweetpeas
Edibles in the garden
Apples
Tomatoes
Celery
Cilantro
Oregano
Thyme
Lemongrass
Potatoes
Rhubarb
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After reading every word and looking at your beautiful pics I went right outside and roto-tilled-raked-dug-planted to the brink of exhaustion. But I now have the beginnings of my own English garden. I am quite proud actually....and excited. Thanks for the inspiation!
Thanks for sharing your beautiful pictures! My yard has a pretty strong cottage garden vibe since I strongly believe, when it comes to flowers and especially perennials - more is more. Last November (in the dark) in a race to beat the 1st frost, I added a couple of tall white Phlox that would look great in your garden. They're blooming right now (in Idaho) and are surprisingly full of blooms and tall for a 1st year perennial. And thanks for reminding me that I love red snap dragons - I've added those to my list of additions for next year!
After removing ugly rhododendrons fence and yellow paint
Before
Thank you so much! I just turned my plain-jane Ranch into a sassy Suzy Cottage with a little paint and a beautiful picket fence with an Arbor. I have just started the plantings, dwarf Hollies at the foundation underneath the window boxes. I will take photos to show the emergence of my Cottage Garden. I too was a vegetable Gardener for years thank you so much
Oh Karen, please tell me these beauties are deer resistant!!! Deer come and go on a daily basis where I live BUT WOW I love your choice of the blooms...
I have never liked English country gardens. Until now. Karen, yours is so beautiful, I could just cry!
Hi, Karen, My husband's eyes bugged out when he saw the espaliered tomato. He's already growing a couple kinds of cherry tomatoes, and they are about 6 ft tall. So I'm trying to help engineer a deal with string to support them. What weight of string do you use?
I wanted to ask if you have tried compacted crushed limestone under your brick walk. We have clay soil and without an underlayment of limestone, the brick sidewalk just sinks and the grass grows over it.
I really enjoy your posts and I learn something with each one. Thanks for sharing your time and talent with the rest of us.
Hi Mary! Yeah, the espaliered tomatoes (I have 3 in the front yard) are my FAVOURITE thing ever. I started doing them a few years ago but this is the year that I really mastered it. I used to use cotton string. Don't use it. It rots and disintegrates. Then I tried jute. It's slightly better. So I use it and if I have some on hand, green nylon string. It's my favourite because it doesn't break, but it isn't compostable so you have to untwine the tomato prior to composting. I haven't tried crushed limestone. That path is made from original bricks from my house and they're quite delicate so if I dug them up to add something underneath ( who knows what's under there now, lol) I'm afraid a lot of them would pretty much crumble. ~ karen!
Your cilantro = my arugula. I had repeating cilantro for a while, but I think it finally succumbed to heatstroke or something*, and even new plants refuse to stay alive. But arugula is my official edible garden "weed."
*something = I hate your garden and you and I will never grow here, I don't care what you try or how well my relatives do in the neighbor's yard.
LOL!! ~ karen
I forgot to mention that I am definitely trying the espaliered tomatoes next year.
It. Is. My. Joy. ~ karen!
Love your blog and your garden. Wish mine were as manicured. I've been gardening for many years now, so control is what I spend most of my time on now.
What I get the greatest pleasure from in the garden these days is propagating; growing from seed, stem & root cuttings. I'm on a mission not to "buy" a garden, but to "grow" one. Although it takes great patience, I just love watching something grow from what seems like nothing. I also love the idea that almost everything in my garden has a story. So much of what I grow came from relatives & friends.
My garden may not be one for the gardening magazines, but it brings me joy all the same.
My favourite thing at the moment is deadheading the day lilies to clean them up. Takes no time and is weirdlyyyyy gratifying. From here on on I hope to be able to split much of what I have. The big hydrangea will be the first thing this fall. ~ karen!
They took three years of growth to reach a good size, but this year I have 6 full hydrangea bushes that I propagated from stem cuttings. It's been one of my most satisfying projects.
I've had great results with fern, hosta, sage & nepeta; not much luck with lavender or roses. But I keep trying.
For me it all started with a spindly little Japanese Maple tree and a strong desire not to mow a lawn! Every year I thin it out and the following year I say "I thought I thinned that out last year", lol! Looks great Karen, can't wait to see it filled in in the years to come!
I was reading your old post the other day about your espaliered apple tree and was wondering how they were getting along. You inspired me to buy one myself! I just picked one up the other day for my boring awful ranch house garage wall, and now have a plan to make an espaliered fruit fence between my house and the next with these. So glad to see how productive yours looks. They may not be English, but they are lovely and so structural. Can't wait for my Pink Lady to do its thing.
Any Brit would be proud to call your garden a proper cottage type. Is a thatched roof in the making?
My dreams of an English garden have been dashed by my husband, who thinks Versailles is the only way to go in terms of gardens. He hates all ground covers because they spread by themselves and "a plant should just stay where you put it", according to him. His idea of a good time is pruning all the shrubs within an inch of their little lives. Marriage is about compromise, but this is hard.
Your front yard update was worth the wait. It looks great!!!!
Told you I did it. ;) ~ karen!
I am using your porch trellis as inspiration for one I am building for my porch. I planted a light pink climbing rose below it so I hope it will scoot up the trellis soon. Love the tomatoes! And your English garden will be beautiful!
Well, I have a few choice thoughts about day lilies! Three of us humans spent hours on Saturday last trying to beat back the #$%^&* day lilies! I had no idea how invasive they were, or how their roots were like those of #$%^&* trees! No pulling out for those rascals! One must DIG THEM OUT! They had spread like crazy but didn't bother blooming, so I didn't even know what they were! There are more that need to go, but our best helper just HAD to go to work today, so us 70+ old codgers are going to work on the rest today. I have already ordered yet another 12 x 12' heavy weed blanket to cover up what we did so far. I'll decide what to do with that area next spring.
A week ago, my daughter bravely denuded an 8 ft sq over grown like crazy unused turtle pen. I have already blanketed it and will decide it's fate by spring. Yesterday she showed me her poison ivied arms-even though she wore long sleeves and jeans for the work! I felt bad for that. It was a hot sunny day and she wore all that-to no avail. Sigh.... So-now, NO friggin' day lilies, ever again. I had always wanted to get the dwarf yellow ones for another area-BUT NO WAY NOW! Your English garden is wonderful. If I was a lot younger I would give it a go, but now I will just enjoy from photos! Today it's off to buy a lot of poison ivy spray, which is everywhere here in my part of northeastern Ohio. Thanks for the photos Karen!
Hello there, I feel your pain. Someone gave me a bushel bucket of corms (I think that's the term) and told me they were Iris...Imagine my surprise when I had those orange things coming up all over creation. Poison Ivy is a hateful thing to have, we have plenty of it here in Western North Carolina.
I hope to start on my English garden soon, Karen's is already beautiful. I'm thinking of hiring those fellows with a stump grinder to take out the day lilies.
Hmmmm, stump grinder...the neighbors had it done in their yard. Noisy and it took awhile, but effective. Saturday last I went to cut some suckers from a stump we have, only to find it completely encircled with a plush growth of adult poison ivy. Right there where I go past it by our driveway-and I had never noticed it! Going to hardware store today and getting lots of spray today. Stupid poison ivy.... Ev
If you haven't heard of him already, I suggest you check out Arthur Parkinson's garden at the Emma Bridgewater factory. He's a young English gardener with a really lush and dynamic gardening style, and he's obsessed with raising chickens! I love him. Your garden looks great!
Nope, never heard of him. I'll give him a Google! ~ karen
Wait, did I read that right? You pulled out lavender and put in other lavender? I'm not horticulturally-inclined so I don't understand why that'd be a thing? Wouldn't it make sense to transplant it if you don't like the exact placement? Since it's an established plant?
Also, I suspect the people whose homes are featured in Architectural Digest don't sleep. They fold up into a tasteful armchair when they're not in use.
There are lots of different kinds of lavender so maybe one type was replaced by another one. (Your comment just caught my eye as I was responding to message just above yours, I don't remember what the Karen's post said).
It also takes just as long to get rid of an English Cottage garden.
When I bought my current house (which does not look very cottage-y) the front yard had what looked like an English cottage garden (if looked from a distance, like from two houses down on the opposite side of the street). I think there was even a climbing rose but I can't swear on it.
If you looked closely you would discover that it was mostly an enormous quantity of those orange day-lilies that grow in every ditch, an equally enormous quantity of oat grass and roughly the same amount of weeds. Here and there was a plant that could qualify for an English cottage garden (one was the above mentioned rose plus 2 or 3 other ones).
I left it as it was for about 2 years as I had other worries and the task seemed overwhelming but my neighbour told me that people were asking if anybody lives there etc. Also, by the end of summer the weeds were almost as tall as i am with their stems so woodsy that I wished I had a machete.
It was horrible to get rid of it. I kept digging and removing the day-lilies rhizomes and the clumps of the oat grass, then I lathered and repeated endless times. When I thought I had removed every rhizome piece I dug again and found out they were multiplying at an alarming speed. Long story short, I think it took me 2 years to get rid of all of that stuff.
I wanted a Japanese garden and evergreens and foliage only. Along the way I realized that a Japanese garden takes a lot of understanding of what you are putting where so I changed the course slightly but now, some 7 years later, I have a jungle-y front garden where everything ballooned up in size so I guess you could say I have a West Coast front garden with lots of evergreens and a weeping nootka (which I planted when it was 2-ft spindly stick) with its top above the roof line and as bushy as a grizzly bear.
I planted a magnolia SHRUB 4 years ago (in a spot where a Japanese maple lived and died) and the magnolia shrub looks liked a small tree and I think I will have to remove it because it will start flirting with the power line next or the second next year.
Karen, are you planning on keeping the lawn at the front or do you plan to replace it with plants later on? I have a blueish hortensia (hydrangea) in a pot for which I have no place. I wish you lived a bit closer because I would be happy to drop it off.
Hi Alena! I'm keeping the lawn for the foreseeable future. Of course that could change, but I don't see that happening any time soon. ~ karen!
Digging up a tree is hard work, Alena. Before disposing of your magnolia you might want to consider some judicious pruning. Not just random hacking but cutting back to shape nicely and to control the size. This would probably increase the number of blossoms too. If you don't know how, there are probably Master Gardeners in your area who can advise you for free. Then there is Google.
Hi PMMK,
Thanks for your suggestion, I will do that. There is a retired master gardener lady living not to far from me and I chatted with her a few times in the past when out with my dogs so I can contact her.
I think I will wait till the end of the growing season since I believe pruning is best done when the tree is going dormant.
Thanks again!
I do know that magnolias should be pruned between mid-summer and early fall so they have time to heal before winter; otherwise, they will bleed sap and not in a good way like maple. I also know that one probably shouldn't remove more than a third of the tree each year. And, the 4 Ds of pruning: remove the dead, damaged, diseased and deformed to maintain a tree's health and good looks.