THE COTTAGE GARDEN

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Some of my favorite low-growing edging plants are sweet yarrow, small iris, alyssum, liriope, and armeria. Runnerless alpine strawberries are wonderful for both fruit and appearance. English cottagers also used herbs and silver-leaved plants—lavender, santolina, pinks, lamb's ears, and rue—for edging. These neutral plants help set off the more colorful flowers.

Perennials predominate in the cottage garden, but annuals are important too, so leave some generous open spaces for massing annuals. Ones that germinate easily can be direct-seeded among the perennials to bloom at a different season. Many of the old-fashioned annuals are generous self-seeders and will come up all over. Some of the nicest are cleomes (or spider flowers), balsam, love-in-a-mist, bachelor's buttons, cosmos, and larkspur.

If you have a small yard, the whole area can become your garden. But whole yard or part, some sort of enclosure will help to establish the intimate feel of the cottage garden. (This sense of containment is particularly important in suburban areas where lawn joins lawn.) Depending on the effect you wish to achieve, you may choose to have a picket fence, rock wall, or hedgerow.

"There is an old tradition that the Madonna lily throve best in cottage gardens because the housewife was in the habit of chucking out her pail of soapsuds all over the flower bed. Curiously enough this tradition is now confirmed by the advice that young growth of these lilies should be sprayed with soft soap and water, to Prevent Botrytis.

—Vita Sackville-West
A joy of Gardening, 1959

The hedge is probably the least expensive boundary and gives you a way to use some lovely shrubs. A formally pruned hedge would not fit the mood of the cottage garden as well as naturally shaped plants do, pruned just enough to maintain the correct size and density. Hawthorn, barberry, privet, holly, quince, spirea, viburnum, juniper, abelia, rose, and lilac hedges are some possibilities. Be sure to allow enough space between plants so the smaller ones within won't be crowded out. A mixed hedgerow would be lovely-flow ering shrubs, fruiting plants for birds and people, evergreens, or foliage for fall color. Or the garden could be bounded just by trees. Tall shrubs or trees will, of course, shade part of the plot and limit what can be grown underneath. On the other hand, they can also form an effective screen for block ing an unwanted view.

The cottage garden evolves spontaneously, letting you plant what you have, what you can.

Shrubs add height and texture to the garden. Breeders have developed many dwarf shrubs in the last few years that are good for the smaller garden, such as snow mound spirea, dwarf nandina, dwarf hol lies and junipers, dwarf crepe myrtle, bog rosemary, some of the daphnes, and potentillas. If you wish to have some actual lawn in your garden, consider including low-growing flowers and clovers in it. Some good choices for such an "old English herbal lawn" would be chamomile, perennial English daisies, baby blue-eyes, blue-eyed grass, creeping jenny, ajuga, maiden pinks, and Irish moss. Choose a grass that you can let grow somewhat longer than conventional lawn grasses, to look less formal and allow your flowers more time to bloom. (The increased interval between cuttings won't be such a bad thing, either!) I've used colonial bent grass on my lawn.

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