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Cottage garden
Most people who look at a cottage garden think that it must be very hard to keep sowing the seeds and re planting every year, but the real secret is that the plants used are usually either self setters or evergreen shrubs . This is why the cottage garden is very un uniformed.
You do not have to have a cottage to have a cottage garden as the beauty of it would enhance almost any property. A lot of the wild flowers are grown here like, fox gloves and corn flowers.
The original gardens were unplanned. The old cottages were usually rented or tied by the farm workers who used the small gardens for many things, food( vegetable and fruit ), flowers for decoration or sale and herbs for medicines and to add flavour to food. The plants chosen were very hardy and easy to grow as time for weeding and re planting was not available. Every nook and cranny should be used like walls and windowsills. A lawn would look out of place in this garden as there was no room for luxuries and no body would have time to tend to it.
Start at your front door you should put an arched trellis for climbing plants like roses or passion flower, any climbing plant the has flowers and scent would be lovely. Potted Lavender is beautiful and can be placed in different areas of the garden. The height and mixture of the plant is really irrelevant as they all add character to the end result. Some favourite plants are:
Hollyhocks ( Althaea rosea ) pink, white and red flowers are abundant in July to September.
Lupin hybrids have lots of lovely big flowering heads from June to July.
Crown Imperial ( fritillaria imperialis ) have yellow and orange heads around April time.
Sunflowers give seeds for eating later in the year after they have shone with their beautiful large blooms in shades from yellow to brown to red
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