There are many different kind of gardens that you can create, from lush bamboo gardens to minimalist rock gardens that have almost no plant life. However, if you have decided that your home needs some gardens, give some consideration to cottage gardens. Coming from English traditions, cottage gardens are the perfect sort of garden if you like greenery but don’t want to do a lot of planning. To understand what makes cottage gardens so great, let’s talk about where they come from and what makes cottage gardens what they are.
A Traditional English Garden
The source of cottage gardens come in old English gardens, tended by the people who lived and worked in villages during the day and didn’t have much time to tend to their garden in their limited time off. These simple cottage gardens, so named for the cottages they were planted outside of, consisted of food plants and flowering herbs. The use of flowers was intended for decoration and to help prevent weeds from taking hold. The plant cover also kept soil from drying out quickly, which meant less watering was required.
In Modern Times
Today, modern cottage gardens are planted less for reasons of providing food and more for decoration, though many of the same principles are in place. For instance, modern cottage gardens generally feature dense groupings of plants, creating an area with lush plant life. For the American gardener without much time, this English garden makes a great idea, since these gardens require little maintenance, the entire concept a product of people from centuries past who were also too busy to spend a lot of time tending garden.
The Plants
Modern cottage gardens are more freeform than they were back when planted out of necessity. There is less of a focus on planting for food and more of a focus on flowers, but other than that, there are few guidelines; cottage gardens are intended to be planted with whatever appeals to the gardener. In essence, these gardens reflect the whims of the person planting it.
For those who are looking to add some traditional plants for cottage gardens to their own, heirloom plants are the way to go, since they hold the look of older versions of modern plants. Flowering herbs are a good choice for these gardens, as are flowers such as daisies and delphinium. Mostly, though, if you work to get that dense cover of flowers and greenery, you’ll have created the latest cottage garden in a long line of them.
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