COTTAGE GARDENS (NATIONAL TRUST)

by Claire Masset

Pavilion Books, £14.99, ISBN 978-1911358923

A picture-book pretty appreciation of an enduringly popular garden style, underpinned with a solid foundation of sensible and knowledgeable advice. Reviewer Jodie Jones is a garden writer.

Who doesn’t love a cottage garden? Its origins may lie in the harsh, hand-to-mouth reality of our genuinely self-sufficient ancestors, but this bucolic embodiment of the Good Life, where beauty and utility combine to romantic effect, has always had a powerful hold on our national psyche. Over the past few weeks the lure of a simpler and gentler way of life has only got stronger, making now the perfect time for this National Trust publication.

It isn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last book on the subject, but it is a worthwhile addition to the genre. Author Claire Masset writes well and with the assurance that comes from being an experienced gardener herself. Her National Trust remit gives her the chance to showcase some gorgeous examples, including Hill Top, the Cumbrian farmhouse immortalised in Beatrix Potter’s classic children’s book illustrations, and the garden at Monk’s House in East Sussex that captivated Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

Alongside charming tales of Medieval housewives growing hollyhocks by the house to combat rising damp, and Victorian aristocrats indulging in a fantasy of rural life, is an assessment of Marjory Fish’s modern cottage garden at East Lambrook Manor, and the late Christopher Lloyd’s creation at Great Dixter (not itself a National Trust property), which Masset describes as a cottage garden on the grandest scale.

‘It is far too artistic and adventurous to classify as a real cottage garden, but it is nonetheless inspired by many traditional cottage garden elements.’

Those elements, including pots, topiary, gates and walls, are all briefly discussed. Chris Lacey’s photographs support the texts with images as ethereal and evocative as you could wish for, and there is also a seasonal round-up of signature plants, which, although inevitably far from exhaustive, is at least a good starting point for anyone tempted to create their own cottage garden.