How, And Why, To Plant A Cottage Garden Anywhere On Earth

I have a proposition for you, one which I do not expect to be controversial. Here goes. Gardens are wonderful.

My High WASP cohort is with me on this one. We do love a garden. And our genre of choice is the English cottage. At home we are not prone to formal plantings of colored annuals, spelling out our monograms. Nor to singular shrubs, lonely, disciplined, labeled. Nor to wallpaper plants, i.e., 60 sad impatiens in a row, advancing before 23 well-behaved azaleas, flanking 7 uniform hydrangeas. While our vacation houses might get a little fanciful - topiaries, follies, the crunch of French gravel paths - at home we like to balance our personal formality with the comfort of a mixed border. Or two. Or six.

High WASPs plant cottage gardens even when the cottage is, well, a little grand.

If one still lives in the family manse, cottage-ification is by necessity limited to regions near and dear. Overseeing an entire acre, or two or forty, covered in artfully massed and scattered and staked perennials? Please, no. Unless you are the queen of something. For ordinary manses, rolling swaths of sustainable vistas are a good thing. But the walkway to the front and back doors, the borders around the paved stone patio, or the brick-decorated swimming pool will most likely cottage-up. And if family fortunes have declined, and one lives in a regular house, swaths and vistas are a thing of the past. One learns to appreciate the small.


You might well wonder, "What is a cottage garden?" You might well consider, "Do I want one?" I ask you in return, do you like:

• Mixed and crowded plantings whose final architecture you can't quite predict
• The Fibonacci curves of nature
  
• Dedicating space to growing plants to cut, either flowers, or food, or both
  
• Walking amongst your plants, and the paths to walk upon
• Honoring the geography where you live?

As you can see in the photos above, cottage gardens should be planted every which way, as though they might have chosen to grow in situ of their own accord. The effect you are looking for, which might in fact be the High WASP credo, is, "Oh this old thing?" Even though you or your landscape architect might in fact have spent at the very least a lot of time, if not money, planning and designing. And then spent a lot of time planting, watching plants fail, and replanting. Dignified chaos is a lot of work.

You should also remember that cottages sustain themselves. You will need to plant things to bring inside, flowers, or herbs, or vegetables, even when you don't have an acre for a cornfield. I remember the cornfield, next to the barn, opposite the cottage, where we stayed on my father's family place. And the deer that would walk out at night, as we held our breaths and waited. But I digress.

Do not worry. Strawberries in a pot count. Orange trees in pots count. Basil leaves on a windowsill count. You only need the chance to crush, or sniff, or bite something you have grown.

Your cottage garden should have paths, to wind through the greenery, to conceal and reveal. Even if the only path you have is the one leading from the sidewalk to your front door, or up the stairs to your apartment, let it meander just for a minute, if you can.

Most importantly, the cottage garden must adapt to the environment in which it finds itself. Plant a polite space, following the culture of your adoptive home. High WASPs wish for nothing more than the nirvana of appropriate. Above, the garden on the right is in fact in England. The garden on the left? Chicago. Planted affectionately, in a corner protected from winds.

Noe Valley, San Francisco. Where a cottage garden includes the plant known as Kangaroo Paws. Under a crayon-blue sky, cottages might have a kangaroo or two nearby. In the desert, a cottage garden might consist of succulents, cacti planted as though they'd just happened to arrange themselves in patterns along your walk, in amongst the swept dust and broken pottery embedded into adobe walls.

You didn't think palm trees were part of a cottage garden? They are in Santa Barbara. While in the hills above Silicon Valley, Mediterranean natives do a heck of a job mirroring the foxgloves, hostas, and peonies of other climates. No need to imitate the cottages of other lands.

So get out the tools hiding in your garage. If you want to get fancy, put them in a basket. Tie a bow on the handle. Do not bewail the lack of a gardener. Gardeners work on the vast nether reaches. What is close to home we do ourselves.

Enjoy the digging, the weeding, the pruning. Nothing is so good for the soul as a good pruning session. Protect your cottage. Curiously, weeds ignore demographics, weedkiller is poison for everyone, and you don't really have to get your hands dirty. One could say the earth is our cottage, if one wanted to speak out.

Archetypal Cottage
Grand Cottage
Corn
Path
Chicago
Noe Valley
Mom's House, LPC
Dad's House, LPC
Garden Necessities, LPC