How to create a Cottage Garden

Informal, floriferous and pretty – we all love a cottage garden. Hazel Sillver looks at how to achieve the chocolate box effect in your own garden.

THE traditional English cottage garden is famous the world over, and it is not hard to see why. While to some it feels old hat, to others this garden style has homely warmth and shamelessly celebrates flowers and scent.

“Nowhere in the world is there anything quite like the English cottage garden,” wrote the late Margery Fish in her book Cottage Garden Flowers. “In every village in the land there were these little gardens, so obviously loved... Wallflowers and snapdragons grew in the walls, and cheerful red and pink daisies played hide-and-seek between the shells that edged the path...”

Often attributed with resurrecting and preserving the cottage garden style, Margery immortalised it in her own glorious garden at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, which is still open to visitors today. Also a garden writer, she regularly wrote for Amateur Gardening magazine!

So what are the key attributes of a classic cottage garden – and how can you incorporate them into your own plot?

The cottage garden in summer, should be a sea of flowers. Snapdragons, nigella and poppies are always in the mix, and should be combined with long-flowering perennials, such as Phlox paniculata ‘Blue Evening’.