The English country garden, more specifically the cottage garden, is so intensely romantic and full of charm that even the most ardent minimalists would struggle to deny a soft spot for them. Blousy, abundant and floriferous, they’re a tangle of girlish colour, soft shapes and accidental magic. But underneath it all, they’re actually quite hard to pull off and often true labours of love.
Libby Russell’s garden in Batcombe is no exception. Set within a bucolic valley in rural Somerset, the garden is a game of two halves. On one side a richly planted and highly productive and ornamental series of beds and borders, and the other a calmer space that leans on the soft curves of the land to create atmosphere and structure. Like the quintessential English gardens of our popular imagination, the productive half is an informal mix of colour, chaos and form, that seem to have always been side by side. Traditionally a cottage garden was a practical one – its purpose was to supply food, medicine and flowers in the limited space around a farm labourer’s cottage. Now they have migrated far beyond the farm hand’s wall, the have evolved into much more complex and ornamental show pieces that are found in some of Britain’s most loved gardens.
But what do they all have in common? The overriding feeling you want from a cottage garden is abundance – bordering on overgrown and ever-so-slightly out of control, rangy height, borders spilling over paths and clouds of colour artfully mingled in a decorative tangle. Plants that give height, that dance and sway and stretch long limbs towards the sun are all very welcome – think hollyhocks, angelica, foxgloves and verbena. And these don’t necessarily have to be planted at the back, they can be front-row, leaning perilously over paths. Equally at mid and low levels, choose plants that create an airy haze of flowers or flop lazily over edges – Alchemilla mollis, Gaura, Dianthus carthusianorum.
Vegetables and other edibles are often integrated into the planting – espaliered fruit trees, towering artichokes, the froth of fennel and hummocks of herbs such a thyme or oregano along edges.
Colour is an essential component of a cottage garden – pastels and brights will happily sit alongside one another, the riotous and the restrained. Here Libby has chosen a palette of pinks, purples, burgundies and whites, with flashes of blue. The goal is not too tasteful – a bit of discord only adds to the charm. But year-round colour, especially in smaller spaces, is a high bar to set yourself. Filling in gaps with annuals such as cosmos, cornflowers and marigolds, and dahlias later in the season when the first flush has passed, will give you an extra hit of colour.
With all this energy, a simple structure is important – often laid out in a similar style to vegetable gardens, they work well as a series of quadrants with narrow paths between beds that you have to push your way through in the haze of high summer. Paths should be organic materials – reclaimed brick in a herringbone pattern, or small gauge gravel paths with railway sleeper edging.
It is telling that even in Libby Russell’s garden, this style of planting has been contained to a specific zone, because even for brilliant garden designers with a lifetime of plant knowledge and regular gardeners to help keep things in check, they are high maintenance. Therefore being realistic about what size area you can dedicate to a romantic cottage scheme is wise – but don’t do away with it all together because despite the hard work, these gardens beam joy and will make you (and the bees) very happy indeed.
Plants for a romantic cottage garden
- Roses – climbing up an old wall, a large shrub rose as the centre piece of a bed, no English garden should be without. David Austin is the place to go, favourites include Rosa Claire Austin, and The Generous Gardener.
- Dahlias – in whatever colour and shape you choose. I particularly like the ‘Honka’ varieties. The joy of dahlias is that they are cut and come again, so the more you cut them, the more they will flower.
- Lychnis coronoria – true neon pink, these little flowers give shocks of colour at ground level with lovely silvery foliage.
- Alchemilla mollis – a classic not just for the plumes of acid yellow flowers, but lily-pad leaves which hold pearls of water.
- Cynara scolymus (artichokes) – wonderful structure, height and drama, also delicious dipped in pools of garlic butter.
