Cottage Garden Landscaping

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.

 

Get the Free Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

1 comment April 28th, 2008

Square Foot Gardening: Intensive Type Of Small Space Gardening

Mel Bartholemew first popularized an intensive type of gardening that he called the square foot gardening. The idea was based on his theory that a wide row of traditional home gardening was not appropriate and wasted time, work, water as well as space. He thought it was possible to grow more vegetables in lesser areas by using minimum of effort. The essential square foot gardening involves dividing garden space in to beds and separating them by paths.

Sub-Dividing Beds Into Squares Of Roughly One Foot Each

The beds are sub-divided into squares that are roughly one foot each. It is common to plant one plant per square for broccoli, basil etc; Use four plants per square for lettuce; nine plants per square for spinach and sixteen plants per square for onions and carrots. To prevent the garden soil from being compacted, the beds may be weeded as well as watered from the pathways.

The benefits of square foot gardening include not having to work as much, saving on water usage, fewer weeds and keeping the garden free of herbicide and pesticides. This type of gardening is especially useful for elderly or disabled persons, but is really fun for all ages!

Square foot gardening means much less work since the soil is never compacted and will stay loose as well as loamy and so one does not need heavy tools as is the case with conventional gardening.

Because of the soil and its water holding capacity, square foot gardening does not require much watering and whatever water is placed, is very near the roots of the plant and thus there is very little wastage of water and also allows for rich soil mixture that will increase the harvest. Close planting that is a feature of square foot gardening allows vegetables to form a living mulch and also shades out a number of weed seeds, prior their being able to germinate.

Natural insect repellent methods are a easy for Square Foot Gardens. Just include companion plants- marigolds and other pest-repellant plants that allow for more efficiency in closed spaces. This way there is no need for pesticides.

Another bonus is that the different types of crops in a small space are not conducive to the spreading of plant diseases.

Check out Scenery Solutions for all your Square Foot Garden needs!

Get the Free Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

3 comments March 26th, 2007

How to Choose the Best Plants for your Square Foot Garden

The following article on choosing plants for your Square Foot Garden, or any garden, should be center stage in your design process. If you’ve been thinking you need to know more about how to choose your plants, here’s your opportunity. Don’t just plant, plant the right stuff!

Continue Reading 2 comments May 15th, 2006