What is your ideal cottage garden style – whimsical and wild? traditional? modern? Create a backyard that reflects you by finding your favorite color palettes and design goals.
How to Find Your Cottage-Garden Style
Some people like tidy and symmetrical formal gardens. Others gravitate toward wild, colorful spaces. If you’re reading this, you’re probably going to be standing next to me in the latter group of people. Don’t you just love the look of an abundant, flowing garden? Did you know there are different styles of cottage gardens other than the traditional English style? They’re all stunning designs, so how does a gardener choose? There is a way – and this post will guide you through the process. Let’s get started.
Define Your Garden Goals
When you are trying to determine your cottage garden style, you first need to think about a few things. Here are some questions to consider:
- Do you want your garden to mostly provide a peaceful, relaxing retreat?
- Will the way the garden is set up encourage free play for children?
- Do you want it to be a place for an abundance of wildlife to call home?
- How much space is available for your garden?
- Will you grow mostly food or mostly flowers?
- What growing zone are you in?
- Do you like the look of structural features like walls, trellises, arbors, or fencing?
- Do you have space for winding paths?
Figuring out the where, what, and why of your cottage garden will make it much easier when deciding on a specific sub-style for your space.
Explore Three Different Cottage Garden Sub-Styles
Kitchen Cottage Garden
A kitchen garden is typically on the smaller side. While they usually have flowers mixed in, the purpose of a kitchen garden is to grow vegetables, herbs, and fruits for immediate use. (This is not the large in-ground plot for growing and preserving vegetables.) The typical size of a kitchen garden is less than 200 square feet and they’re usually, you guessed it, close to the kitchen.
Plan on densely planting and mixing herbs like oregano and parsley with traditional cottage garden flowers like snapdragons and daisies. Grow tomatoes and peppers with pretty companion plants like lavender or marigolds. There are practically endless combinations of plants that will create a beautiful, productive garden.
Traditional English Cottage
The English cottage garden – old-fashioned and idyllic!
The original style of cottage garden, this type usually includes beauties like climbing roses, peonies, delphiniums, and foxgloves. While still growing wildly and informal, the English cottage garden gives off the feel of rustic romance. English cottage gardens typically take up 1/4 acre or less, and gardeners make use of every inch of space by planting a large variety of annuals, perennials, vegetables, fruits, herbs, shrubs, and trees.
Wild Meadow Cottage Garden
Meadow gardens can be small or really big. They can be planted as a strip or a mass planting in the middle of the yard, in the skinny space near the curb, or even covering an acre or more. In these gardens, native plants are typically the star. Plan on densely planting and growing colorful wildflowers and grasses. Of course, vegetables, herbs, shrubs, and trees can be mixed in, but the emphasis is on natives and sustainability.
“American gardeners are excited to embrace gardens that feature plants native to their specific regions. Native plants are pretty low maintenance – they have been thriving for ages with hardly any effort from humans. By planting them, your homegrown landscape will resemble what you’d find out in the wild and will produce a habitat for local pollinators and other wildlife.” Excerpt from the post What is a Cottage Garden?
Which sub-style catches your eye the most? Kitchen, traditional, or meadow? If you’re thinking, “Well, I like all three styles…” you’re not alone! You can combine two or more styles, depending on how much space is available to use.
Now that you know what type of cottage garden style (or styles) suits you and your space, you can choose your color palette. If you’re going with a combination of styles, the colors used will help keep the look of the gardens cohesive.
Choose a Cottage Garden Color Palette
Color combinations of the flowers in the garden are virtually endless. Go for jewel-toned, pastels, monochrome, primary colors only… it’s your choice! You’re the artist. If you need a place to start, here are a few of my favorite flower color combinations that go well together:
- blue and purple
- yellow, purple, and white
- & shades of coral and pink.
(You can dig deeper into using colors in the garden by checking out this post from Monrovia or this one from Proven Winners.)
Create a Mood Board for Your Garden
Now that you defined your goals, chose a style (or a combination of styles,) and decided on a color scheme, take it visual by creating a mood board. Pinterest is perfect for this as you can find and organize your ideas quickly.
You can check out my cottage garden board for inspiration here.
The best part of planning a cottage garden is that the rules are really loose. Build a garden and plant the plants that will bring you the most joy! I’m looking forward to seeing your spin on a cottage garden – share your photos in the comments.
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