Introduction
Planning a cottage garden, but not sure where to begin?
This article contains some simple ideas to inspire you on how to create a cottage garden which requires low maintenance.
Stacy Ling writes that a cottage garden is: “Characterized by a charming, informal design with a mix of plants.
Cottage gardens evoke a sense of rustic, old-fashioned beauty that is often associated with the English countryside.”

English Cottage Gardens
The ethos of cottage garden landscaping is to create a garden spilling over with colour and scent. Quintessentially, the style is relaxed, cosy and informal.
Tumbling planting weaves and tangles together.
Julie Martens Forney, writing in Better Homes and Gardens:
“Cottage gardens bubble in cheerful tangles of flowers that form a kaleidoscope of hue and texture.”
Cottage Garden Style

When designing a cottage garden, the aim is to build an abundant tapestry of colours using native plants that flower at different times of the year to give interest throughout the year.
Planting spills over paths, trellises, arches, fences and walls.
Focal points, such as boulders, rustic benches and water features are to be found surrounded by scented flowers. Paths are winding, and built from natural materials.
Cottage Garden Ideas
When planting a cottage garden, keep your plans simple.
The cottage garden design is haphazard rather than formal.
Aim to avoid planting in straight lines when planning your flower beds and borders in order to keep that natural appearance.
Sketch out on a piece of paper where you’d like your focal points to be, and what you’d like them to contain.
Traditional cottage gardening mixes shrubs with bulbs and flowers and vegetables, so don’t feel like you need to have patches of certain sorts of plants in square beds.
Cottage Garden Focal Point Ideas
A focal point could be something as elaborate as a paved seating area, or as simple as a container of bright, perennial flowers.
You may decide to create a water feature from an old ceramic sink, filled with waterplants.
A trellis or screen can make a beautiful focal point: make it attractive by training a flowering climber up it, such as honeysuckle or clematis.
Obelisks add height and interest and can showcase a beautiful flowering creeper, such as the Scarlet Runner Bean or the Mandevilla.

Create A Backdrop for your Cottage Garden
The flowerbeds and borders of your cottage garden should be crammed with planting which covers the soil completely.
Consider incorporating creeping and trailing plants, such as creeping thyme, wall germander and snow in summer.
These will spread over the soil with colour and interest while helping to smother weeds at the same time.
Choose some Tall Plants For Your Cottage Garden
Next, consider planting the backdrop: taller plants, such as foxgloves, hollyhocks, red hot pokers and delphiniums.
Choose flowering shrubs to give effortless, low-maintenance colour to your planting palette.
Remember, there are no hard and fast rules for creating a cottage garden look: choose what you love, and what suits your soil type, situation and aspect.

Planting Ideas for a Low-Maintenance Cottage Garden
Let’s look at choices of planting for your low-maintenance cottage garden.
Choose herbaceous perennials that provide several seasons of interest: months of flowering during the summer and then attractive seedheads and foliage in the latter part of the year.
The aim is for sustainability and interdependence with nature.
Choose self-seeding annuals, such as love-in-the-mist and cockscomb.
When they have finished flowering, you can shake their seed pods where you want them to grow the following year.

Credit for image to KRiemer on Pixabay
Bulbs for a Low-Maintenance Cottage Garden
Bulbs are a great low-maintenance choice because they will come back, year after year.
Avoid those which have to be dug up at the end of the season and stored, such as begonias- you’re looking for low-maintenance, remember!
Think snowdrops, daffodils, grape hyacinth, crocus and tulips for a beautiful blast of bright colour in the springtime.
Grow some in containers amongst your flowerbeds to create extra height and interest.
You could surround them with natural slate or pebbles to create small islands of colour. This will also keep the weeds down.
Summer bulbs include irises, lilies and dahlias.

Remember to grow them in patches, intermingled with your other planting.
Long-Lasting Perennials for Your Low-Maintenance Cottage Garden
Some ideas for long-lasting perennials include hollyhocks- an old English favourite.
These are very easy to grow from seed and flower abundantly in a wide variety of delicate, romantic colours.
They will grow tall, so plant them at the back of your flowerbeds, or near fences and walls.
Foxgloves, another native species, will also grow easily in your cottage garden, as will phlox and daisies.
Hellebores, salvia, nepeta and baptisia are also great choices of perennials for your low-maintenance cottage garden flowerbeds.

Attract Bees and Butterflies
To create height in your cottage garden flower beds you could plant delphiniums or lupins.
These will grow quickly, and attract bees and butterflies in the summer months.
You could experiment with peonies: these beautiful, frilly flowers come in a variety of pretty colours and will return each year.
Bellflowers are another hardy perennial which produces delicate, violet bell-shaped flowers.
Shrubs for a Low Maintenance Cottage Garden
Choose flowering shrubs which will fill your cottage garden with colour each year with low maintenance.
Choose butterfly bushes, hydrangeas, Japanese spirea, summersweet shrub rose, oleander and rock rose.
Look at planting a fuchsia shrub, as this produces such beautiful pink and purple bell-like flowers, year after year.

Climbers for a Low-Maintenance Cottage Garden
An important element of the cottage garden is the use of climbing plants to create a backdrop of colour and interest.
Grow climbers up obelisks, trellises, over arches, up and over walls and fences.
Once established, climbers will grow and return year after year.
English Cottage Garden Favourites
An English cottage garden favourite is the romantic clinbing rose or you could choose from one of the many varieties of clematis.
Trailing Nasturtiums are a personal favourite of mine.
They grow easily from seed and produce an abundance of bright jewel-like flowers right through the summer and well into autumn.
Another lovely option is the Mandevilla, which produces stunning, trumpet-shaped flowers in the summertime.
You could consider Morning Glory or Moon Flowers.
The scarlet runner bean is a popular choice for growing up an obelisk or a trellis, as it produces bright scarlet flowers when it comes into bloom.

Caring for a Low Maintenance Cottage Garden
Well, the emphasis is on low maintenance, which is why the cottage garden contains mainly shrubs and perennials.
You shouldn’t need to be out there having to replace plants every year. However, you do still need to visit your garden frequently to look out for pests and diseases. Treat these quickly.
Feeding
Feed your garden at least annually, with a good layer of well-rotted mulch, or organic compost, if you don’t have any.
This will maintain the quality of your soil and keep your plants growing vigorously.
At the same time, mulching helps to keep down those pesky weeds!
It will rot down naturally and help to feed the soil.
Plant Flowers Close Together
Stacy also recommends planting your flowers close together to prevent weeds from growing and taking over your garden.
Remember, growing creeping varieties will also cover the soil and stop weeds from taking root.
Weeds are inevitably going to pop up here and there, so be vigilant and pull them out when you see them.
Deadheading and Pruning
Regularly deadheading your flowers when their blooms have faded will encourage new ones to grow.
Keep an eye on your shrubs and prune back any dead or diseased wood.
Following the flowering season, some of your shrubs will benefit from pruning to prevent them from getting too tall and to encourage new growth in the spring.
Watering your Low Maintenance Cottage Garden
As the emphasis is on low maintenance, set up and auto watering system, rather than dragging around a heavy hosepipe.
The advantage of this drip system is that you can set it on a timer to water your garden at a set time when the heat of the day is cooling.
This means that your plants will be watered correctly with no effort on your part.
Sounds good, don’t you think?
Conclusion
I hope my article has helped to provide you with some simple ideas for creating a beautiful, low-maintenance cottage garden.
Remember that the idea is to create lots of colour and interest with plants that will come back every year.
Happy gardening!
Suggested readings
To find more ideas and inspirations for plants which will flower right through autumn, then visit my post: October Flowers: A guide to the Best Blooms of Autumn
If you’d like to learn how to create your own leaf mulch, then read my article: Steps to Create Leaf Mulch: A Comprehensive Guide
Mandevilla is an easy plant to propagate – see my post: Mandevilla propagation a comprehensive guide
If you would like to learn how to propagate peonies, visit my post: How to Propagate Peonies: A Clear Guide
For inspiration for your cottage garden, visit this blog: Cottage garden ideas.
There are 32 gorgeous ideas to inspire you in your planning for your own cottage garden creation.
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Great ideas for arranging our garden.
Thank you- I am glad that you found my article helpful.
I’m really pleased that you found my article helpful!