Choose cottage garden favourites

These bee-friendly blooms will create a colour haze or vibrant drifts

Roses are a must and planting several of the same cultivar creates a lovely summer spectacle. My choice would be ‘Bonica’, a French-bred modern rose that produces large clusters of semi-double pink flowers. It’s tough, healthy and hardly ever out of flower. English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is another essential – a sun-loving, hardy lavender that can survive 20 years+ if it’s pruned every August. The short flower spikes dry well and the silvery foliage is a foil for brighter plants. Other silvers might include a wellbehaved catmint, such as Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’, soft-white rock rose helianthemum ‘The Bride’ and highly scented old-fashioned pinks such as ‘Mrs Sinkins’, a mid-19th-century white. Viola cornuta is another pretty addition especially close to roses. ‘Belmont Blue’ is worth seeking out because it’s so reliable. Sea hollies add some steely structure and Eryngium bourgatii ‘Picos Blue’ produces lots of medium-sized blue flowers. It’s perfect with the white ‘cup and saucer’ plant Campanula persificolia alba. Both will self-seed moderately if left, but look tidier if you cut them down after flowering. Spires will add structure and lupins, which flower in May, are cottage garden stalwarts. Verbascums are also vital and July-f lowering V. chaixii ‘Album’ produces narrow tapers of white flowers blotched in blueberry. Or, use May-flowering V. phoeniceum ‘Violetta’, which is easy to grow from seed.

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