Top Tips for a Perfect Cottage Garden

Jan 13, 2025

To create the perfect cottage garden, embrace informality and natural beauty. Here are key tips to help you design a charming and thriving space:

1. Mix Plant Heights and Textures:
Place taller plants, such as delphiniums and hollyhocks, at the back of your garden. Allow them to gracefully cascade into mid-height blooms like foxgloves and lupins, before blending into lower-growing flowers like geraniums. This layered planting technique adds depth and visual interest to your garden.

2. Practice Successional Planting:
To ensure continuous color year-round, choose plants that bloom at different times. Start with early spring bulbs like snowdrops and crocuses, followed by summer favorites such as peonies and roses. Extend the floral display into autumn with asters and sedums for a garden that remains vibrant through every season.

3. Attract Wildlife:
Select nectar-rich flowers to support local wildlife, including bees, butterflies, and birds. Lavender, honeysuckle, and buddleia are excellent options that offer fragrance, color, and vital resources for pollinators.

4. Embrace Informality:
Steer clear of rigid symmetry and let your plants self-seed and naturally intermingle. This relaxed, unstructured approach is the hallmark of a true cottage garden. Enhance the look with winding paths and rustic materials to deepen the charm.

By following these cottage garden principles, you’ll create a beautiful, eco-friendly space that blooms with natural charm and offers enjoyment year-round.

Ready to get your garden blooming?

Our dedicated garden team have expert horticultural knowledge, ready to provide valuable guidance on the best plants to choose, their ideal locations, and the optimal planting times for your garden.

What can we do for you?

Plenty! You’ll see from our list of services and skills that, when it comes to whipping outside spaces into shape, there’s not much we can’t help with.