Roses, clematis, a thatched roof: a cottage garden in Brittany.
The cottage garden is a distinct style that uses informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, it depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure. Homely and functional gardens connected to cottages go back centuries, but their stylized reinvention occurred in 1870s England, as a reaction to the more structured, rigorously maintained estate gardens with their formal designs and mass plantings of greenhouse annuals.
The earliest cottage gardens were more practical than today's, with emphasis on vegetables and herbs, fruit trees, perhaps a beehive, and even livestock. Flowers, used to fill spaces, gradually became more dominant. The traditional cottage garden was usually enclosed, perhaps with a rose-bowered gateway. Flowers common to early cottage gardens included traditional florists' flowers such as primroses and violets, along with flowers with household use such as calendula and various herbs. Others were the richly scented old-fashioned roses that bloomed once a year, and simple flowers like daisies. In time, cottage-garden sections were added to some large estate gardens as well.
Modern cottage gardens include countless regional and personal variations and embrace plant materials, such as ornamental grasses or native plants not seen in the rural gardens of cottagers. Traditional roses, with their full fragrance and lush foliage, continue to be a cottage-garden mainstay—along with modern disease-resistant varieties that retain traditional attributes. Informal climbing plants, whether traditional or modern hybrids, are also common, as are the self-sowing annuals and freely spreading perennials favoured in traditional cottagers' gardens.
The cottagegarden is a distinct style that uses informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants...
A cottage, during England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or bordar) of a small house with enough garden to feed a family...
link] Anne Scott-James, The CottageGarden (London: Lane) 1981, demythologised the origins of the English cottagegarden, and its treasured topiary among...
face of the South Cottage even before the deeds to the property had been signed. Nicolson was largely responsible for planning the garden design, while Sackville-West...
CottageGardens is a historic house in Natchez, Mississippi, USA. The house was built for Don José Vidal in 1795. It was subsequently purchased by Earl...
Rising". Jarman's 1990 film The Garden was filmed at the house. Jarman cultivated a garden in the shingle surrounding the cottage, a mixture of sculptures assembled...
cottage was originally known as Double GardenCottage and was listed in Queen Charlotte's 1801 accounts for her garden as having been built for £450 by a...
day cottagegardens include countless regional and personal variations of the more traditional English cottagegarden. The traditional kitchen garden, also...
with a bright green appearance. It is widely considered an English cottagegarden classic. Campanula persicifolia is a clump-forming perennial herbaceous...
grizzled skipper. The UK National Collection of geums is held at Brickwall CottageGarden and Nursery in Frittenden, Kent. Geum albiflorum Geum aleppicum – yellow...
identifying even the wildest wild garden is control. The garden can incorporate both natural and artificial materials. Gardens often have design features including...
been seen on the parterres and terraces of gardens of the European elite, as well as in simple cottagegardens; Barnabe Googe, about 1578, found that "women"...
one of about 20 species from the genus Hellebore. It is a poisonous cottagegarden favourite because it flowers in the depths of winter. Although the flowers...
providing for a home in a wide array of forms—from the cottagegarden to the formality of a knot garden. The owner of one of the Loire chateaux in France,...
shingle cottage-garden at Prospect Cottage, created in the latter years of his life, in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station. The cottage is built...
The Shakespeare Garden and Anne Hathaway Cottage is a recreation of Anne Hathaway's Cottage in Wessington Springs, South Dakota, United States. Inspired...
remained popular among Spanish settlers in Florida while productive cottagegardens became commonplace among Dutch settlers and English pilgrims in Massachusetts...
Gardeners' World in 1989 and has since presented other gardening programmes such as Real Gardens and Open Gardens. Projects include Life in a Cottage...
English garden, which became popular during the 20th century in France and northern Europe, is based on the style of the late 19th-century English cottage garden...
The Palm CottageGardens, also known as the Henry Nehrling Estate, is a historic site in Gotha, Florida. On November 7, 2000, it was added to the U.S...
comprises the museum itself, a millpond and waterwheel, forester's cottage with garden and animals, art and craft exhibitions and workshops, and trails...
Gardening. Macmillan. "Thyme (thymus)". englishplants.co.uk. The English CottageGarden Nursery. Archived from the original on 2006-09-27. Ingram, A.; Ibbotson...
(Bioswale) Garden of Extremes Tropical CottageGarden Rose and Fragrance Garden List of botanical gardens in Florida "Welcome to your Garden - Mounts Botanical...
path links the cottages and encircles the village green with its sundial. The cottagegardens are planted in a Victorian cottagegarden style. Since 1943...
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