For the type of cottage garden your trying to plan then where to start is on a piece of paper and draw a rough plan, true cottage gardens have a mixture of Perennials, shrubs, annuals and some edible's like lettuce or herbs or even cabbage / onions but it's up to you.
These beds are made up of different areas, called rooms as the borders are split up into a size for each room to allow for different colours , textures, and hight's to compliment each plant or group of plants of the same type growing next to it, in front of and behind.
Shrubs give the beds structure and colour as well as texture and are there ALL year round, Perennials pop up spring, give colour and hight as well as perfume or texture at the leaf, they die down in late summer and gone by winter so you need the likes of shrubs to give you colour and shape in winter unless you want to look at bare soil for about 5 months over winter.
Annuals are staples in borders as they help fill in all the spaces that you see between some of the other shrubs or perennials.
You can get hight from making structures to grow climbing plants either like Roses, Clematis ect, you can select these as there are many other climbing plants but, it all depends what type of structure you can have within the borders, my favourites of climbing frames are stout strong metal or wood TPEE shaped as they take up little room bur look nice when the plants are leafless in winters IF that's what you have in your area.
Next you look at the house, do you want to secure fixtures to the wall for climbing plants as back drop, but remember you need to get close to these plants to care and prune them when required.
IF you go for structures attached to walls, you have to allow air flo to get behind the structures, I use old cotton thread reels as a block between the wall and the wooden frame but you may find other things for that purpose.
You might need to amend your soil so go buy a cheap soil kit from garden store, they cost a couple of dollars, dont buy a big expensive thing as the cheap ones tell you the same info. it will tell you the soil PH so you know what to add to amend the soil IF required.
I would recommend getting as much horse manure as you can lay your hands on, it must be well rotted and it will allow air, humus to lighten the soil and help hold onto moisture at summer times when most needed, and it feeds the plants.
Most places that keep or use horses are happy to let you take any amount of there manure pile as you want free of cost, they have a daily supply of this stuff and we gardeners call it gardeners gold.
to test the horse manure it should have lost the smell of fresh droppings, when you hold it in your hand it should crumble like good soil and it should be brown like a wonderful garden compost.
If you cant get that then shop bought compost can help with added chicken pellets but go with the directions on the package for how much a dose to use as too much is as bad as none at all.
Look at edging the bed, use bricks on there side, wood or metal whatever you choose as you need to define the line between bed and path or lawn, whatever you have.
After all that, go to book store library and look out for books on cottage garden beds or how to plan beds and borders because for sure, English cottage plants might not be suitable for your area but there will be some types that look the same or alike the affect your trying to create, make lists of the plants you want with hight, colour and proper name so you can search them out.
go to garden store and pull out the plants/ shrubs you want and place them in groups together to give you ideas of how it will look, for perennials, always plant in groups of 3-5-7, if you plant single plants or 2 off, they look lost and don't give the oomph you are looking for in either colour or texture.
Hope this gives you enough info to be going on with as it is silly to try plant out now, best time is end of summer when soil is cooling down or early spring when the soil is warming up but the real summer heat has not hit yet.
The drain pipe you have the blue chute thing at could be a great place for a water but, you but the large water but, a fitting to add to the down pipe and this sends the rain water into the but, you just come along with water can and hey presto, free water for your garden plants, make sure you keep the but covered or you get Mosquito laying eggs or green alge forming inside the but.place the but on bricks for ease of turning on /off tap.
Have fun and take your time, plants and building structures are not cheap so plan well and do a bit at a time though it's always wise to do the hard landscape first then planting out. after you dig the bed and prepare the soil, try NOT to keep stamping or walking on the soil as it causes the soil to become compacted again after you just dug it and allowed air into it, use planks of wood to stand on and this will spread the weight of your feet.
Best regards. WeeNel.
