ROMANCE OF A COTTAGE GARDEN

Take a nostalgic walk through the cottage gardens of yesteryear and bring a touch of romance to your own garden in this month of love

of cottage gardens past, visually pretty gardens filled with fragrance and colour, a bee’s haven and a butterfly’s delight.

While the informal planting style and the simplicity remains true, the addition of a rustic bench, a birdbath or small statue or a rose-covered archway further adds to the charm.

It is a cornucopia of plants, not only of the wild flowers of Europe and North America, but of flowers from other countries, including our rich South African floral heritage. Plants that suit local climate and soil conditions include Cape marrow (Anisodontea spp.) and honey bell bush (Freylinia spp.); felicia and watsonia; tulbaghia (wild garlic) and scented pelargoniums; butterfly bush (Buddleja salviifolia); nemesia and lobelia; diascia (twinspurs) and scabious (pin cushions) which bring honeybees for their nectar and pollen.

ROSES OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Roses with their soft, fragrant and romantic blooms were, and still are, an integral part of a cottage garden. Basic cottages were made beautiful by these old roses growing against their walls – “Parson’s Pink China”, also known as “Old Blush”, Rosa gallica officinalis the “Apothecary’s Rose”, and Rosa centifolia, the cabbage rose.

One of the best yellow roses of French breeding was “Céline Forestier”; “Souvenir de la Malmaison”, named to honour the memory of the Empress Josephine, was one of the first repeat-flowering Bourbons. “Madame Isaac Pereire” (1881) has huge, deep cerise flowers with a strong perfume. Most old roses have conspicuous thorns, the exception is cerisepink “Zéphirine Drouhin”, a Bourbon climbing rose.

The 1920s and ‘30s saw the introduction of Hybrid Musk roses, “Moonlight”, “Penelope”, “Cornelia” and “Felicia”; “Buff Beauty” and “Erfurt” also had softly coloured blooms.

Sixty years ago, Englishman David Austin set out to create beautiful roses with the colours, sweet fragrance and beautiful form of old roses combined with repeat blooming and disease-resistance. Their names are as enchanting as their blooms – “The Lark Ascending”, “The Poet’s Wife”, “Heritage”, “A Shropshire Lad”, “The Pilgrim” and “The Shepherdess”.

We are fortunate that fashion has not affected the cottage garden as it did other garden styles or much of the beauty, scents and value of old roses, flowers and herbs that grew in the cottage gardens of yesteryear would not have been preserved for present day gardeners to enjoy.