Anyone attempting a cottage garden look?

I'm reworking my back yard to a cottage garden look, and I feel like I'm floundering. So many of the flowers I love wilt around here. :(

Anyway, my garden will have a definite Texas/cottage garden/tropical all-in-one look!

The bones of the garden:

White crepe myrtle
Chaste (vitex) tree - purple blooms
Ebbing's silverberry elaeagnus - already pruned to a small "weeping" tree
Two Sweet/tea olives (just three feet high)
Agapanthus - blue-ish purple
Bi-color African irises
Some "Green Ice" mini roses - white
3 small gardenia bushes
2 "airy" shrub plants with burgandy leaves and tiny pink flowers (can't remember the name!)

Nice boulder rocks
A chiminea that looks a hundred years old - a little tex-mex in the garden haha

I'm planning on adding:

Apricot Sprite Agastache
Red Hot Poker Flamenco
Red Salvia
Goldfinger Mexican Sunflower
Arizona Sun Blanket flower

Please offer any suggestions which you think would add interest/contrast/beauty to this hodgepodge of a plan I'm working on! I also want to tuck several little sedums here and there.

I've been reading the Texas board, cottage, perennial boards, and butterfly and hummingbird boards. I just seem more confused than ever!

Oh....let me tell you how happy I am to be here. I've gleamed so much knowledge just since yesterday. I've been glued to my computer reading here!

Jo

Hi Jo-in-Tx. Welcome to Dave's Garden.:) I don't know much about cottage gardening or what grows in Houston either, but I'll be watching to find out. I grew up in Bellaire, but I had no interest in gardening at the time. We grew St. Augustine grass, and an awful tree that I can't even remember the name of and that's about it. Oh, except we did have an awesome gardenia bush that I really miss. They don't grow up here.

Really, gardenias don't grow in Fredericksburg?

Thanks for responding. I'd love to visit Fredericksburg, sometimes. I'm sure I'd appreciate the dryer climate!

Jo

Hi Jo welcome to DG and the Texas forum!!!

This is my first year growing in Texas so I can't answer your question but I wanted to say welcome and hat you have so far sounds great to me for starters
I knwo I want to do a cottage look her eat my house but it will take time as we have had to remove bamboo and do alot of clearing but in time I hope to get it going.

They told me that at a local nursery. Even though they were selling gardenias. She warned me that it would be a very short lived plant. I guess because we are dryer and more alkaline. I was very disappointed.

Hi Jo! Welcome to DG. I'm from Sugar Land also. Glad t see a neighbor here.

I'll tell you who has a beautiful cottage garden - that's Fly_Girl. She's not far from us either.

I would definitely add some milkweed, shrimp plant, jacobinia, cosmos, gosh.....the list could go on and on! You should take a trip to Enchanted Forest. It's not far and you'll get a ton of ideas!

I love Enchanted Gardens, but have never been to Enchanted Forest. I understand they have the same stock, but I plan on making a trip there, anyway.

I was just at Enchanted Gardens on Monday, in fact. Got caught in a downpour! :( I can't wait until they get more plants!

Jo

We went to one of those one day when we were down there on business. I wish I could remember which one. It was near Sugarland, I think.

Enchanted Gardens is also great but Enchanted Forest is much bigger! Owned by the same people. You'll love it.

Silverfluter - they're both near SL but in different directions. If you were more in a rural area, you visited Enchanted Forest.

Then I must have been at Enchanted Forest. It was pretty big and I don't remember any houses around it.

Hi Jo - Welcome to DG! Kristi is right about Enchanted Forest - and she introduced me to it! There are so many plants that attract wildlife - butterflies, birds, bees, h-birds that I'd recommend the natives not only for that reason, but that they will do well in the Houston extremes - heat, humidity, then drought and then floods! E- Forest or Arbor Gate up north of you in Tomball have lots of plants that do well here. I consider my gardens to be works in progress - not attainable in a short season or two. Also - consider going to the College Station DG Round Up in April - you'll get great ideas and great plants from fellow DG'rs. It's a great way to meet Texas folks and learn Texas plants!

I've never had a nickel's worth of luck with Agastache! For many years I've maintained something of a mixed cottage garden/English garden look although I'm trending away from this now. I would encourage you to try some local plant sales for perennials. I regularly donate plants to the Bellaire Garden Club Sale (along with complete cultivation instructions). Many of these plants are "pass-along" plants - trouble-free, multiplying easily that for some reason are often hard to find in nurseries.

Try using some perennial salvias (although frankly I've never been lucky with Salvia gregii despite all the raves about it), Goldstrum rudebeckia, Spuria Iris (very difficult to get so I try to donate yearly - it's foliage looks better longer than Louisiana Iris and it blooms a little later) in place of annuals. Be very careful about some of the re-seeding salvias . . . . . some are pretty thuggish (especially that lovely pale pink/white one). Crinums are wonderful perennials for our area and look good nearly year round.

Welcome Jo! I live up in the northern central part of TX but I know you can't go wrong with the Texas Natives. They will return year after year either from root, or reseeding theirselves. To look up by several different ways try this website www.npot.org, it has links to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower website. Also that one, and http://www.texasstar.org/ are sites of another DGer (Josephine or aka Frostweed). Another place is at the top of the Texas Gardening Forum for a "sticky" (stays at the top) to look up natives by color also.
Whatever you do, have fun and share your pictures!
Sheila_FW