Specialty Gardening: Need alist of cottage garden plants, 1 by pgt

pgt wrote:
Here's a picture that I took this morning of the entire garden that I call my "cottage garden". I have lots of cottag-y plants in here, but try to use some simple design principles to try to make it look just a little bit organized. One of the things I try to do is to repeat colors. So as an example, starting with the silvery blue tree on the left, I echoed that color in the artemisia in the front of the middle of the garden, and then again with the brunnera "jack frost" on the far right. The blue/purple of the catmint on the far left is echoed with peach leaf bellflowers in the middle, and then the johnson's blue geraniums on the right. This year I added some chartreuse short sedums to echo the chartreuse of the lady's mantle. I also try to have some spaces where the eye can "rest". Because the center roses are so vividly bright, I try to have the other colors of the garden be more muted and soft so that your eye isn't bouncing all over the place. I placed the tall green sedums on either side of the roses to also give your eye a place to rest.

Now, the trick is to have stuff that will be blooming all season. So, there are also lots of things in there that aren't blooming yet, but will later in the summer. I have a lot of phlox in there. I like both the early blooming phlox like morris berd and miss linguard and the later blooming phlox like david. There are also daisies in there, hydrangeas, astilbe, daylillies, and other stuff that I can't remember right now that will also be blooming later ;)

And, of course there are also lots of plants in there that have already bloomed, and have finished - like alliums, columbine, dicentra, siberian irises.

I think that what I've learned about cottage gardens since I started building this one 4 years ago, is to be flexible - plants are pretty resilient, so if you don't like where something is, just move it. And lots of self seeders pop up where you originally didn't want them, and often look best where they decide they want to be. Try not to stress out too much about things - gardening is so much fun. Enjoy it!

Good luck with your cottage garden, and please post lots of pics for us!!!