Any Way You Like
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Poppies, daisies, and delphiniums incite a riot of blooms. Walls, fences, and evergreens confine the chaos.
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Once you've used structures and evergreens to establish the garden's basic form, it's time to add plants for flowers and foliage. Feel free to experiment and play. Cottage gardens are fluid; they can change from week to week and month to month--often just on a whim. Such freedom and flexibility are important to graphic artist Linda Hostetler, whose wondrous cottage garden in The Plains, Virginia, combines hundreds of different annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, bulbs, and ground covers. She's constantly planting new things and moving others around. "All new plants need to be 'on wheels,' " she explains. "I'll walk a new plant from place to place, maybe leave it in a certain spot for a week or so and say to myself, 'How fantastic is its color against that color?' Eventually, I'll find a location that works."
Don't be surprised if not everyone quite understands the untamed look at first. Sometimes a cottage garden only makes sense from the house looking out--not from the outside looking in. This quirk provides the perfect excuse to invite neighbors over for a tour.
Another point of potential confusion is that color in a cottage garden often doesn't depend on big sweeps of a single kind of flower, but rather many small spots of different flowers. Neighbors don't always get this concept. Garden designer Cathy Umphrey of Annapolis admits: "I have a friend who says every time she comes by, 'Oh, I see your garden isn't at its peak.' " (Cathy's garden appears on pages 100-102 of the March 2004 issue of Southern Living.) Don't be discouraged by such misunderstandings. If you like your garden, that's all that really matters.
Color Is Key
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A little space can still have lots of color, as proved by this planting of blue phlox, grape hyacinths, lamb's ears, violas, and candytufts.
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Cottage gardens may lack huge sweeps of flowers, but color is still prominent, often year-round. Some folks favor soft pastels, but Linda says she gets more oomph from strong color combinations. "My plants need to pay rent; I like a lot of zing and pop," she asserts. Her favorite mix is red, blue, and yellow, as evidenced by blue- and golden-foliaged conifers planted with a red-leaved Japanese maple. Another excellent example of this is blue- and gold-leaved hostas planted with 'Palace Purple' alum root (Heuchera micrantha 'Palace Purple'). More Plants, Less Maintenance
How can this be so? Easy. The more thickly you plant, the less room there is for weeds to sprout. In addition to her other plants, Linda also uses an assortment of ground covers to smother weeds. Some of her favorites are mazus, 'Aurea' creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea'), and dwarf Japanese garden juniper (Juniperus procumbens 'Nana'). She welcomes flower seedlings that pop up in unexpected places. "My attitude is, 'Let go; let God,' " she says. (For more on reseeding blooms, read " Flowers That Plant Themselves", also on page 112 of the March 2004 issue of Southern Living.)
