I am in the process of setting up flower beds which will be somewhat similar to cottage gardens. This is my first summer seed grown plants are blooming. I have a collection of hollyhocks which are blooming (some won't bloom until next year.) Olympic Verbascum which is extraordinary, bright pink echinacea, Campanula Pyramidalis, Adenophora, several kinds of primrose, day lilies, TB, Japanese, and Siberian iris, Shasta
daisies. Now I am starting seeds of delphinium, lupin of various types and colors, New England asters, agastache Blue Fortune, etc.
I live in a rustic, stained cottage about a mile from the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is the first time I have had a climate which would be ideal for plants could
not grow formerly.
My greatest problem is that I am not so strong and I am 67. I can hire a neighbor to help me though. As I work outside, I find myself getting stronger
though, but gardening will always be a physical challenge for me.
In researching tonight, I found this link to cottages and cottage gardens.
http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/cottage-garden_4.html
I hope to find more illustrations of cottage gardens too.
I would appreciate advice for kinds of plants to grow. Design will be a problem
because I have so much space to fill.
901 photos related to cottage gardens and design
Gloria, are you using the lasagna method to start your new beds? It has been a huge help to me creating beds without the back breaking labor of stripping sod and tilling. In most areas here I already have pretty good soil, so I just put down overlapping cardboard on the sod, mulched deeply with straw, and waited about 3 months to start planting- that's been my modified version of the lasagna method. By the time I start planting, the worms have done a great job of fluffing the soil. I have some areas with poor or rocky soil where I put down cardboard and then started dumping all my used potting soil and half priced, broken bags of potting soil, compost, mulch, peat, etc., and planted directly in that when it was deep enough.
gemini, That's a great idea about the cardboard. In town the stores throw a ton of it away almost every day. I could easily do it. Do you wet
it down right after you place it on the ground? I like the idea of using discarded potting soil and garden refuse for a lasagna. It surely sounds easy enough to try. Thanks. I think I will.
I don't even wet it down typically- just make sure to have the straw (or whatever compost) thick enough to keep it from blowing. Typically it absorbs moisture from the grass underneath and dew and its fairly moist in a day or two. Plain, brown, corrigated (sp?) cardboard works best- the worms love it. The sod becomes compost quickly as the covering kills it off and the earthworms are working near the surface with the increased moisture retention.
I've found dandelions will often sprout through the layers- they don't care how deeply they're buried. Even then, those are easier to get rid of individually than all that sod. Otherwise I'm having very few weed issues in those beds, they've been easy to maintain and most things I've planted in them have been very happy. In those with used potting soil, I've found a few surprises- seeds and bulbs that were hiding in there have popped up here and there. Of course, I had to just let them be, LOL. At my last house, I used mulched up tree leaves in the fall instead of straw- that was awesome, great compost and pretty and neat looking too.
When I moved to this house, I brought a lot of the garden plants with me, and just dotted them here and there in the yard where I knew I wanted gardens. Then I sort of connected the dots, laying cardboard between and filling in with straw mulch. I was in a hurry to get a lot of stuff in the ground, and ended up having to cut chunks out of the cardboard and stripping the sod underneath (that hadn't had time to die off), then getting things in the ground. A mistake I made was making some beds too big, without proper thought to giving myself room to get in there and work, LOL. I'm trying to remedy that now, but it will be easier to keep that in mind when you're laying out your beds. I've seen pics of some gardens where the paths are mulched in straw, and the beds are mulched in hardwood mulch. It was nice definition and neat and tidy looking.
This is my butterfly-hummingbird garden, kinda wild and chaotic. It's on top of what used to be gravel driveway. The rear of the bed where the tall Lilies and Mullien are was the original part of the bed, started in '06 by my friend who used to live here. Since then I've gradually increased the size of the bed as I built up quantities of used potting soil and clearanced bags of compost. The foreground was added last spring ('08). It's pretty shallow there, probably just 2-3" of soil on top of the gravel base after it has composted, but the Poppies and Bearded Iris deal well with that.
gemini, The picture is lovely! It looks so healthy and lush. I am very anxious to start my own cardboard garden!
I might do some spot gardening with it too. I have a large number of seedlings and I will be hard pressed to find a place to put them. So I can also start on that right away.
This is my second summer and my first summer of blooms from perennial seedlings of last year. The plants are just huge. I have about 5 or 6 kinds of Shasta daisies, several kinds of hollyhocks, agastache, Olympia verbascum,and campanula pyramidalis. They did the best of my seedling plants. I just love starting seeds. Right now I am trying to start several perennials on coffee filters folded and put in a slightly open sandwich bag. I was able to sprout Indian Springs hollyhocks in just a few days. This is nice because I have an
older friend who wants hollyhocks but who can't bend over, etc. I can
plant them for her later on, and she will have a border of them against
her house, flowering next year.