Susie’s Garden Create
a cottage garden
When I started my career in gardening, I learnt a lot through reading books, often picking them up for a few pence in jumble sales. One of the writers that really spoke to me was Margery Fish who, in the 1950s, created a beautiful cottage garden at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset. You can still visit the garden, cared for by new owners and with help from volunteers.
Her influential books were, and still are, such an inspiration to me. Her relaxed style with its self seeders, and its mix of trees, shrubs and perennials is well suited to wildlife gardening. She encouraged people to grow hardy geraniums among other cottage style plants and nowadays there is an incredible range of these tough easygoing flowers.
One of Margery’s favourites was Astrantia and I grow lots of different colours of these versatile plants. Their common name is masterwort, though I prefer the old name of Hattie’s pincushion. They y are such useful flowers, growing in dappled shade or in sun, providing the soil doesn’t dry out too much. Their colours range from dark burgundy to white, and they tend to be avoided by slugs and snails!
The wine dark colours are particularly popular and you often see varieties such as ‘Claret’ and ‘Star of Fire’ in display gardens at the
Chelsea Flower Show. Astrantia ‘Shaggy’ has large white flowers, ‘Ruby Wedding’ has ruby-red flowers on maroon stems and Astrantia maxima (one of my favourites) is soft pink and feels as if it is made of paper. With their starry flowers, they are definitely one of the stars of my garden.