THINK SOOTHING PINK

Cottage gardens demand a distinct softness of tone. Pinks, lemon yellows, lavender, mauve, pale blues and white should dominate the palette. Many of the traditional cottage-garden plants like roses, pinks, sweet Williams, snapdragons, hollyhocks, delphiniums, lupin, foxgloves and phlox are all naturally within this range of colours, and just by selecting them you set the palette for the garden.

Pink is the key colour in soft, gentle planting schemes and there are more pink flowers than any other kind to select from. Some of my favourites are aquilegias, bleeding hearts, lupins and pink cranesbills like Geranium endressii, G. riversleaianum

‘Russell Prichard’ and G. x oxonianum ‘Claridge Druce’. These, together with pink peonies and oriental poppies, are all archetypal cottage-garden plants.

Mix blue with pink and let the spectrum between the mauves and lilacs have full rein, and you cannot help but capture the true cottage-garden spirit. Campanulas, knapweed, nepeta and Anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’ are all good blue perennials. A good blue clematis like Clematis ‘Perle d’Azure’ can be allowed to scramble through a rose or other shrub and then be pruned back hard each spring. Delphiniums are a must, and the Elatum hybrids are perhaps easiest to grow. If the site is well drained and sunny, then the bearded iris works as a true cottage-garden plant. And if you have heavy soil like I do, Iris sibirica will grow rather happily in a border.

Top: Monty’s Cottage Garden. Above: Geranium ‘Claridge Druce’. Right, l-r: lupins, Anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’ and Iris sibirica