Chris Young. Garden Design

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to spill across pathways. Self-seeding is

encouraged, as are plants that can colonize gaps

in paving. Hedges are frequently used to divide

the garden into a series of enclosed spaces with

different planting designs and atmospheres.

The combination of soft and riotous planting

with formal clipped hedges and decorative

topiary results in one of the most successful

contrasts in this design style. Away from the

house, in larger yards, there may be room for

meadow planting and native hedges that create

a wilder impression.

The most appropriate hard materials for use

in cottage gardens are natural stone or brick,

with weathered or rescued materials favored for

their aged and subtle appearance. Gravel is also

used for pathways, partly because it allows easy

self-seeding. Simple post and rail or picket

fences are also suitable.

The geometry of the

layout is rarely clear due to

the dominance of the plants.

Many cottage gardens,

however, retain their simple

rectilinear patterns, which

are revealed in winter

when the plants die down.

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OFTEN CELEBRATED for their abundant

planting and apparent confusion, cottage

gardens are traditionally simple and regular

in layout, with a central path to the main door

and rectangular beds on either side. Originally

created to supplement the diet of the peasant,

they only later became more quirky and

idiosyncratic.

Although

associated with

rural locations, the

cottage garden idyll

of the late 19th

century is often

considered to be

an urban invention

—a reaction to the

unrelenting cityscape, where the urban dweller

was more concerned with color and scent than

with food production. The archetypal cottage

gardens of Surrey and Hampshire in England

were later championed by the garden designer

Gertrude Jekyll, who developed them as the

basis of her Arts and Crafts garden plans.

The scale of cottage gardens is generally

intimate, sometimes even restrictive to

movement, as dense planting is allowed

Cottage gardens

Decorative produce

in a working garden.

Jewel-like aubretia cascades

over a weathered stone wall.

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What is cottage style?

CHOOSING A STYLE

142

The romance of the cottage garden wins the hearts of designers

across the world. This is mainly due to the dominant force of the

planting, profusion of color, and the sheer variety of species

used in this quintessentially English style. At its best, a cottage

garden uses thematic or coordinated ﬂower and foliage color

within small compartments or “rooms”, as seen to great effect

in the gardens at Sissinghurst or Hidcote Manor in England.

COTTAGE GARDENS IN DETAIL

The layout of a cottage garden should be simple and geometric, yet

many diverge from this pattern into more idiosyncratic twists and

turns, especially as the design moves further away from the house

where wilder planting dominates. Pathways are often narrow, so

that the plants partially obscure a clear way through. This romantic

planting softens the appearance of a garden, and brings you into close

contact with scent, foliage textures, and spectacular blazes of color.

The paved areas are constructed from small-scale units, such as

brick, gravel, or cobbles, which allow mosses, lichens, or creeping

plants to colonize the joints and surfaces. Simple seats, old well

heads, tanks, pumps, and local “found” materials make interesting

focal points and create a serendipitous quality, while arbors or arches

decorate the thresholds between the various garden spaces.

Lawns are used, but it is the planting beds that are considered

most important. Elsewhere in the garden, fruit and vegetable beds

retain the simple geometry of the earliest cottage gardens, with brick

or compacted earth paths providing access to these working borders.

Clipped

boxed balls

Sundial

Brick paths

Geometric

box hedging

Colorful mixed

planting

FORM AND COLOR

The geometric order of

Dial Park, Olive Mason’s

garden in Worcestershire,

England can be seen

clearly in the plan, whereas

the generous and informal

planting (right) obscures

and softens the lines.

Summer color in a garden for all seasons

With its wide range of foliage textures, tumbling climbers, colorful

perennials, and perfumed ﬂowers, Olive Mason’s garden is planted

for year-round interest. In spring, green and white foliage prevails,

interspersed with subtle drifts of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and

forget-me-nots. The colors intensify in early summer (above) to warm

pinks and mauves, with roses, geraniums, delphiniums, clematis, and

centaureas. As summer progresses into fall, the palette deepens to the

cerise, deep blues, and purples of asters, phlox, dahlias, and aconites,

and in winter everything is cut back to reveal the simple pattern of

the box hedges, enhanced by a bark mulch spread over the bare beds.

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WHAT IS COTTAGE STYLE?

143

VEGETABLES AND

HERBS

Productive borders are often

seen in cottage gardens,

with cut ﬂowers and herbs

used in association. This

attractive mix softens the

functional appearance of

these areas, and may also

help to control pests.

ROSE ARBORS

These make pretty

shelters for seating, and

can also be used to link

different areas. Here the

intense color and delicate

scent of a pink rose help to

awaken the senses on a

walk through the garden.

RUSTIC FURNITURE

The patina of timber

garden furniture changes

organically over time;

plants can be encouraged to

weave through it to create

an impression of apparently

natural, but actually

cultivated, recolonization.

WEATHERED PATHS

Brick, stone, and gravel

pathways provide textured

surfaces as a foil to the

complex planting on either

side, allowing plants to

seed and soften the

boundary between path

and border.

PROFUSE PLANTING

Cottage gardens require

intensive maintenance due

to the complex planting.

The art lies in the skilful

association of planting

partners, and the selective

editing of species that

become too dominant.

KEY DESIGN ELEMENTS

DESIGN INFLUENCES

The modern interpretation of the cottage

garden is based to a great extent upon the

work of Gertrude Jekyll and her architect

partner, Edwin Lutyens. They created many

outstanding designs in the 1890s under the

auspices of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Jekyll used local cottage gardens in

England as the inspiration for her planting

schemes, teamed with elements from her

Mediterranean travels and color theories

developed during her ﬁne art training.

Together, Jekyll and Lutyens designed

and planted enormous borders in a luxuriant

and romantic style, which brought timeless

cottage-garden qualities to the estates of

some of the wealthiest Edwardian families.

Their approach set the agenda for the

English garden for the next century.

Munstead Wood designed by Gertrude Jekyll.

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Interpreting the style

A profusion of plants disguises the underlying geometry of this

garden style. Plan simple-shaped beds and make sure they can

accommodate a good depth of planting. The repetition of plants,

color themes, and hedging can bring some order to the borders,

which are primarily created for variety and complexity.

SUNSHINE AND FLOWERS

The late-summer colors of dahlias and

cosmos ramble through shrubs, splashing

their warm tints close to the incidental

seat and almost smothering the path.

DECORATIVE FOOD CROPS

Purple-ﬂowered lavender echoes the vivid

cabbage leaves in this garden. The lively

mix of produce and ornamental planting is

typical of the cottage garden style.

CORNER FOR REFLECTION

A old rustic seat, surrounded by soft

drifts of pink perennials and a delicate

white rambling rose, provides a quiet

place for rest and contemplation.

UNDERLYING FRAMEWORK

The rectangular beds and pathways can

just about be seen beneath the warm-

toned perennials and the searing carmine

spikes of Lythrum virgatum ‘The Rocket’.

CHOOSING A STYLE

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RESTRICTED PALETTE

The cottage garden is reinterpreted by the design company

Oehme, van Sweden in this border in Virginia, US, where

shrubs and perennials are intricately woven together.

FRAMING VISTAS AND VIEWS

This rose-covered pergola provides height and enclosure,

as well as rich color and perfume. Use various structures

to deﬁne the entrances linking different spaces.

SIMPLE RESTRAINT

Low box hedging contains the unstructured border planting

of poppies, salvia ,and foxgloves; a technique appropriate

to front yards, where greater order may be required.

GARDENS TO VISIT

EAST LAMBROOK MANOR, Somerset, UK

A cottage garden for modern times, planted by

Margery Fish. www.eastlambrook.co.uk

HIDCOTE MANOR, Gloucestershire, UK

Celebrated Arts & Crafts masterpiece.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk

MUNSTEAD WOOD, Surrey, UK

Gertrude Jeykll’s house and garden.

www.ngs.org.uk

SISSINGHURST, Kent, UK

Vita Sackville-West’s 20th-century garden.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk

“A sense of discovery,

curiosity, and mystery

is central to the cottage

garden experience”

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Cottage garden plans

Abundant planting and a mass of ﬂower forms, textures, and colors deﬁne the cottage

garden, with the hard landscaping—usually narrow paths of stone, brick, or gravel—

taking a back seat. In Gabriella Pape and Isabelle Van Groeningen’s design, the lively

soft planting comes in many colors, while Jinny Blom has opted to celebrate bright

pinks and rich reds in a limited, warm palette.

SEA OF PLANTS AND FLOWERS

This garden was designed by Gabriella Pape and Isabelle Van

Groeningen for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London in 2007, as

an homage to Karl Foerster, a great nurseryman who experimented

with perennials. It creates the sensation of swimming through plants.

KEY INGREDIENTS

1 Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’

2 Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’

3 Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’

4 Veronica ‘Shirley Blue’

5 Paeonia lactiﬂora ‘Duchesse

de Nemours’

6 Aquilegia chrysantha

7 Hosta ‘Royal Standard’

8 Achillea ‘Moonshine’

ISABELLE SAYS:

“This layout was based on Karl Foerster’s

own garden in Potsdam, Germany, so it’s

not typical of our work. The planting,

however, is. Inﬂuenced by the English style,

it incorporates colorful matrix planting, and

drifts of plants and ﬂowers are reminiscent

of Edwardian woodland gardens. These

themes recur a lot in our work.”

“Generally, our inﬂuences are varied and

we often bounce ideas off each other to

develop design solutions. English garden

designers, such as Vita Sackville-West,

Geoffrey Jellicoe, and Charles Wade, are

a major inﬂuence. We also like to work

with existing elements and create the

garden and planting around them.”

Blocks of Italian

porphyry stone

Acer palmatum

‘Fireglow’

Breedon gravel

Bench

The step risers

are made from

cut Italian

porphyry stone

CHOOSING A STYLE

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COTTAGE GARDEN PLANS

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RESTRAINED PALETTE

Modernist treatments, such as simple, clean paving, provide a cool

contrast to the hot-hued palette of plants that tumble and explode

around this garden by Jinny Blom. In true cottage style, the seemingly

haphazard, densely packed planting pockets soften and relax the

more ordered layout. The use of gravel allows plants to self-seed,

creating additional random patterns of spontaneous growth.

Grasses, seedheads, and bulbs create veils of foliage and texture.

KEY INGREDIENTS

1 Betula nigra

2 Akebia quinata

3 Geranium

PATRICIA

4 Allium sphaerocephalon

5 Verbena bonariensis

6 Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’

JINNY SAYS:

“This view is just one part of a multi-

leveled garden—the different parts of

which are connected by walkways and

steps, so that, overall, the design ﬂows

nicely. The clients were a young family,

and the design needed to be robust,

allowing the children to play freely.”

“We agreed a strategy of hard-wearing,

virtually indestructible materials that

would be softened with romantic planting.

This seems to have paid off, as the garden

has matured well. We have recently added

yew hedging in order to create a visual

anchor in winter.”

“I am inspired by many different things,

but, on this occasion, the work of Italian

architect Carlo Scarpa was very important

in creating the design—in terms of ﬂow

and visual stimuli.”

White

limestone

bench top

Crushed

limestone

gravel

White

limestone

paving

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TWO GARDEN TYPES are associated with

the Mediterranean region: informal and formal.

Informal gardens tend to feature gravel, with

planting arranged in structural groups or

masses. This look is inspired by the shrubby

vegetation (maquis) of the south of France or the

more arid regions of southern Italy and Spain.

Olives, citrus fruits, vines, lavender, and

rosemary thrive in these conditions, as do

succulents and grasses, while colors tend to be

muted, incorporating soft sage-gray greens and

purple-blues. Gravel is used between areas of

planting and to create pathways. Drifts of plants

appear to emerge spontaneously in the gravel,

perhaps punctuated by arrangements of rocks

and boulders. Sometimes a dry stream bed is

recreated with clusters of informally arranged,

drought-resistant plants.

For more intimate

and often urban

spaces, terra-cotta

instantly evokes the

style, supplemented

by mosaic tiles or

features to add

splashes of color.

Walls are often

white-washed, creating

clear backdrops for shadows, but where paint

is used, hues are often bold. Rustic containers

introduce colorful planting at key points, and

may be used as focal features or arranged in

informal groups of different sizes.

The formal gardens of the Mediterranean

tend to utilize water and stone, often with

clipped hedges and specimen trees such as tall,

slender cypresses. In some of the gardens of

Spain and southern Italy there is a clear

Moorish inﬂuence, as seen in the courtyards

and water features of Spain’s Generalife and the

Alhambra. Decorative parterre planting is also

typical of the formal style, with plants selected

for foliage rather than ﬂower color, and densely

planted trees such as Quercus ilex (holm oak)

providing cool shade.

Fleshy succulents are ideally

suited to a warm, dry site.

Typical Mediterranean courtyards offer seating areas in shade.

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Mediterranean gardens

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