Create your own co container garden
Don’t worry if you’re working with a patio or balcony, you can still create something special using pots, hanging baskets and planters… just add colour
COTTAGE gardens are great fun and incredibly beautiful, especially during the summer. Most cottage gardens are a combination of shrubs and herbaceous perennials, which flower during the summer months and die back over the winter. But these most eclectic and English of displays are not as difficult to achieve as you may think.
What’s a cottage garden without roses? Get started with ‘patio rose’ varieties that will give you all the beauty of a rose in a compact container.The light orange, peachy flowers of ‘Sweet
Dream’ boast a subtle fragrance and bloom best in full sunlight in any soil type.This small shrub grows to around 50cm tall, so remains nice and dense.
For a pretty pink patio rose,
‘Queen Mother’ has semi-double flowers and dark, glossy foliage. In a sunny spot, you can enjoy repeat flowering, and so will your bees – attracted to the lightly-fragranced blooms. When potting your roses, choose a compost and fertiliser specifically designed for them. They will deliver exactly the right balance of nutrients to help them flourish.
Most cottage gardens have the taller plants and shrubs at the back of the displays, with the shorter varieties to the front. It’s a simple but highly effective design trick.
Cottage gardens are full of blooms and foliage, with a wild aesthetic. So, cram containers full of plants to create that unruly but charming appearance.
A few favourite plants that go particularly well together, including lupins and delphiniums, thistles, and day lilies. Both couple up well in these types of border.
Mix them with flowering shrubs forsythia and flowering current for colour and Philadelphus mock oranges for fragrance. Roses obviously also bring that colour to your garden. Shrub roses are extremely popular in cottage gardens.
Consider planting in some fruit bushes in between your perennials. During the war when food rationing was in place, many people added gooseberries, raspberries and a host of other soft fruit varieties to their gardens.The flowers, foliage and fruit of the bushes will add depth to borders.
THE combination of structured plants like roses and more informal plants like delphiniums gives the boarder a personality and that’s the magic of cottage gardens.
But not only are cottage gardens stunning, but they are functional too. Use containers to plant colourful edible plants.
Chard is attractive and tasty, with stunning leaves that are green and pink-red stalks. ‘Bright Lights’ boasts rainbow-coloured stems and is easy to grow. Sow from March to July and you’ll be harvesting tasty and nutritious chard from July to October.
Grow strawberries in a terracotta planters. It’s really easy to plant up a strawberry pot, and with a little sunshine you can enjoy great results with minimum effort.
Plant in March to April in a fruit and veg compost, watering well to help them settle in. During the growing season, feed with a liquid potash feed like a tomato fertiliser to boost fruit growth. Growing these type of edible plants together will have a wonderful effect, the colours and textures complement each other beautifully, and they taste great when you harvest them.
Use containers that match the style, like rustic stone planters.
Unique and repurposed items will also add charm and personality – think old bathtubs, sinks, barrels and buckets. Grouping these containers together helps achieve that classic cottage look.
The main thing to remember when growing in containers is that your plants will dry out quicker than if they were in the ground.Therefore, it’s important to ensure they get enough water.This is especially important if containers are positioned under the eaves of the house, because this can shelter them from the rain.Think about investing in a cheap watering system if this is the case.
Even with a container garden you can create a charming cottage aesthetic. Pack planters with classic varieties for a wild, informal appearance.
Lupins are a cottage garden favourite, as