Romantic Cottage Garden

You dream of a beautiful, romantic garden, where the delicious scent of honeysuckle and old roses fills the air. The planting is loose and informal, with fruit bushes and herbs dotted amongst the flowers. There is a magical sense of profusion, where drifts of delicately-nodding flowers intermingle freely, exuding scent and softening edges, and providing a focus for butterflies and bees. It's a nostalgic, evocative garden reminiscent of days gone by, where troubles are soothed by deadheading the roses and time seems to pass more slowly.

It's easy to create a cottagey look in your garden, whatever its size. Just choose some of the lovely old-fashioned plants like violas or bell-flowered campanulas, and plant gorgeously scented repeat-flowering roses like the silvery pink Hybrid Musk 'Felicia' or dainty 'Old Blush China'. Group your plants together in small drifts, and you'll be rewarded with a lovely, informal display of scent and colour all summer long.

The structure and layout of your garden should be subtle and low-key; the focus is the plants themselves. A winding path of brick, gravel, or bark chippings is a lovely way to lose yourself in your secret garden, perhaps leading to a place to sit and dream, with your head amongst the flowers, listening to the bees hum.

Annuals are an easy way to vary the look of your garden each year, and are an important part of the cottage garden look. Choose from delicate, nodding Aquilegia, fragrant Night-Scented Stock, or Mignonette. For a bolder colour scheme, go for English marigolds or poppies.

Make a simple rustic arch or trellis to support some deliciously rampant scented climbers, like honeysuckle or a climbing rose like shell pink 'Blush Noisette'. Or take a tip from the cottage gardens of years ago and create a potager effect by growing a wigwam of brightly coloured runner beans interplanted with scented sweet peas.

You can start creating your romantic cottage garden today! Our Design Your Garden pages show how we can help you makeover a whole border in your chosen style, from design and planting plans to buying all the plants you'll need. Like to take a look? Go there now!

There are five other dream garden styles for you to browse through if this isn't quite what you're after.
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