Garden Design Trends
Over the last five years, landscape designers have been asked to create sleek, clean, and contemporary designs. Clients requested elegant gardens with low maintenance needs and easy-care plants. However, this trend is changing.
Step back into the charm of the Cottage Garden!
Today, clients are looking for colour and texture. The new interior colour trend has been extended to exterior gardens. Blending plant blooms and foliage texture is genuinely an art form. It takes a keen eye for design to pull off this garden style.
A cottage garden is a very distinct style that uses informal design, a variety of woody plants, and mass plantings of ornamental and edible plants. Cottage gardens bubble with charm, creating a kaleidoscope of hues and textures. This is not a carefully manicured garden style. It is fun, relaxed, and colourful.
How to Create an Easy Cottage Garden!
Start with a small cottage garden, and as you gain confidence, you can expand it. Avoid creating a garden that is too large to manage. Begin by focusing on a small section of the garden, decide which plants to keep and which ones to remove, and then introduce new plants to enhance your cottage garden. You don’t have to remove everything to renovate your garden; add a few new perennials or ornamental grasses to add interest and colour.
Bulletproof Plants!
Remember to choose hardy plants with long bloom times for your cottage garden. Look for low-maintenance plants that require little water once they are established. There’s no right or wrong way to create your garden, so pick the plants you love.
A Few of Bulletproof Perennials:
Shasta daisy, coneflower, salvia, daylilies, russian sage, sedum, lady’s mantle, black-eyed susans, hosta, nepeta, ferns, perennial geranium, geum, sedges, blue oat grass, beebalm, and karl forester grass.
Add a Touch of Romance with Roses!
Roses always add a touch of romance to a cottage garden. Select tough, disease-resistant varieties like the Knock-Out family series or good old-fashioned Canadian Explorer shrub roses. The classic English roses from the David Austin series are timeless and add grace and charm to any cottage-style garden.
Enhance Your Cottage Garden with Intriguing Elements!
Boulders add interest to cottage gardens as long as they are planted in the ground. Remember to bury at least 1/3 of the boulder below the garden surface so it looks naturally placed. Add a simple birdbath to attract wildlife. Select garden art for interest. Obelisks, orbs, and architectural sculptures scattered around the garden are eye-catching accents among plants. Place a wrought iron archway with climbing roses over a walkway as a ‘welcome’ to your home.
Add Seating Areas!
Make sure to incorporate special sitting areas into your cottage gardens to encourage people to wander, explore, relax, or find a great place to read. Scrolled wrought iron love seats take us back to the era of the great garden parties, where families and friends would meet and enjoy each other’s company.
Whimsical and soft garden lines characterize cottage gardens. They feature classic flowering plants reminiscent of those in your grandmother’s garden and often include natural or well-worn structures and garden elements. Choose plants you love to create your charming cottage garden.