Cottage Garden Style with Native Plants
LSweeney_moderator
| Posted in Mid-Atlantic Gardening on
Do you love the cottage garden look but want to use native plants? I was exploring this concept recently and came across these great articles with lots of ideas:
https://www.finegardening.com/article/defining-the-new-american-cottage-garden ,
I particularly love the idea of pairing the cottage garden with the new perennial style since it results in a longer peak season!
Replies
This is my style. Packed full, very casual, lots of native self sowers, and a batch of different annuals year to year!
Thanks for sharing! I love this style too; the self-sowers allow for so many surprises and unexpected combinations.
After living in the UK, I'm definitely a dreamer and someone who is trying to feel transported when I walk into my garden. A vast goal for someone new to this. I just started my horticulture/gardening adventure likely when everyone else did in 2020. A way of connecting with my grandmother and grandfather who sparked my interest and were skilled, and a way to channel my energy to bring beauty during a tough time for the world. I've kept at it and am completely obsessed. Now I'm in the master gardener course in my county in PA. I accidentally put native plants in my cottage gardens (2 experiments). One I'm now realizing needs more hemming in with some boxwoods around the edge to allow for the madness. I'm also in the process of redesigning my redesign to fit into the permaculture ideas. After planting a beneficial flower garden (awaiting the results in the spring!), I feel more and more inclined to do good for the soil, planet, our survival these days.
Unrelated but designed to help any area near to this composter, I have just purchased a subpod (ok, 6 of them), and am in love with the design. A few Aussies who were struggling with how to help the planet came up with this ingenious composter design and I just assembled two yesterday. I am a newer composter and tried multiple routes and was a messy failure. These are dug into your garden or lawn or anywhere and dual as a composter, bench, and home for worms. Any contiguous soil apparently benefits, so I'm also putting one near some fruit trees and in my raised bed garden.
These are gorgeous designs. Are there plans on this site for our own properties? I like to dream, but I also want to create what I see at times. I just joined this site and want to have designs to download and try. All on those pages would be lovely.
Hi! There are tons of design ideas on the site. For a start, you can use the search feature to find articles about topics you're interested in or even just search "design ideas".