Cottage Garden Landscaping

April 28th, 2008

Each kind of garden has its own function. A flower garden, for example, features vegetation that decorates the area around a house or building. Vegetable gardens provide vegetables for food.

Another kind of garden is called a cottage garden. Originally, they were created for crops. They were immensely useful to stave of starvation of poor workers during the 18th and 19th century.

But hardship did not dampen the workers’ pride. They started to throw handfuls of seeds randomly throughout the garden. Soon, flowering plants sprouted and gave the garden its aesthetic beauty.

Cottage Garden Landscaping Components 

Today, cottage garden landscaping features a mixture of helpful and ornamental plants. In this type of garden, there are more useful plants that are used for food, medicine or animal forage, than decorative ones. The ornamental flowers are added as an afterthought to brighten up the garden.

The idea of cottage garden landscaping is to plant useful and decorative plants in a small area. Unlike cottage gardens of the past, today’s cottage gardens are designed to be pleasing to the eye by carefully arranging ornamental plants, herbs, vegetables and other ornaments. Vacant lawns are quite small since most of the space is attributed to vegetation.

Cottage garden landscaping involves the construction of paths. These are important components in a cottage garden. They are usually straight and they often have a garden island in the middle. The materials for these paths are subtle. Such materials include crushed gravel and old bricks. Pieces of broken pots or terracotta tiles are used to line up the edge of paths and garden beds.

Another important aspect of cottage garden landscaping is the presence of garden accessories. Wooden arches, for example, are built so that climbing plants can grow on them. Picket fences are used for bordering the garden. Sometimes, even weatherproof furniture is placed in a cottage garden.

In cottage garden landscaping, even the most mundane items are used for decoration. Items such as rustic water pumps, weathervanes, sundials and figurines are quite common. The aim is to generate a sense of peacefulness of past times.

Of course, the most important things in cottage garden landscaping are plants. Most gardeners choose fast growing plants so that the garden will look dense. Self seeding plants are also grown to spread the dense effect. A nice touch would be to add scented plants to bring fragrance into a cottage garden.

Truly, cottage gardens are one of the most practical types of garden that a person can make. With it, a household can save money, use the plants and decorate their homes at the same time.

 

 

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Landscaping, Square Foot Gardening

Entry Filed under: Landscaping, Square Foot Gardening