The best British cottage gardens – inspiration from a stunning new book
What makes British cottage gardens so magical? Is it the roses? The foxgloves? The romantic jumble of flowers spilling over paths?
Cottage garden style has always been loved, but it’s particularly popular at the moment.
A British cottage garden has more plants than hard landscaping, lawn or anything else, according to Clare Foggatt. So the Great Dixter Barn Garden certainly qualifies for its place in British Cottage Gardens – Beauty & Abundance!
So I talked to gardening journalist and editor Clare Foggett, author of a beautiful new book, British Cottage Gardens: Beauty and Abundance, to find out what really defines the style.
Beauty and Abundance showcases both small and large cottage gardens, beautifully photographed by Jonathan Buckley. One or two are famous gardens, but most are private – the book opens the gates to some of the best British cottage gardens to be seen today.
It also has interviews with the garden owners and designers. This will help you adapt that gorgeous cottage garden feel in your own garden, whether you have a country cottage, a suburban plot or even a modern new-build garden.
Beauty & Abundance – British Cottage Gardens by Clare Foggatt and photographed by Jonathan Buckley. (Note that links to Amazon are affiliate, see disclosure.)
What is a British cottage garden?
I talked to Clare at one of the largest and better known gardens in the book, Great Dixter. This may seem surprisingly grand for a discussion about cottage gardens.
But as Clare explains, it perfectly demonstrates many of the principles behind the cottage garden style.
‘What’s a cottage garden? What defines it?’That’s what I asked myself when I started the book,’ says Clare. ‘And it’s also the question that every single person that I’ve spoken to about the book has asked as well.’
They certainly don’t have to be in Britain, although many are.
‘There’s a sort of tick list of elements that people associate with cottage gardens, like mixing edibles in with flowers plus a certain higgledy-piggledy sort of charming informality with self-seeders and cottage garden plants. But not all gardens have everything that defines a cottage garden.
And you certainly don’t need an actual cottage.’
In the end, Clare came to a surprisingly simple conclusion: ‘If you can add up all the areas in your garden and planting accounts for most of it — more than paving, landscaping and lawn — I think you have a cottage garden.’
That abundance of planting is really the key to that British cottage garden look. And Great Dixter very much qualifies.
In the Great Dixter Barn Garden, there are plants on every possible surface – apart from the paths where you walk, the entire garden is full of plants, including up the walls.
‘It’s no surprise that all of the garden owners in the book are just absolute plant nuts,’ she says. ‘Planting is the key. Lots of abundant planting everywhere.’
For other definitions of cottage garden style, see What is Cottage Garden Style?
The plants that create a cottage garden look
According to Clare, there are some plants that instantly create the British cottage garden mood.
‘Definitely roses. I don’t think you can not have roses.’ Peonies, honeysuckle, sweet william and lilac are also top cottage garden plants. They’re all slightly old-fashioned, Clare thinks, which adds to the charm.
Lilac and clematis – old fashioned British cottage garden favourites.
Self seeders are very important. They create that essential relaxed, colourful style because ‘they just do the work for you and pop up in haphazard places, but always look nice and natural,’ says Clare.
Top British cottage garden self-seeders include:
- Foxgloves
- Honesty
- Sweet rocket
- Alchemilla mollis
- Smyrnium
- Aquilegia (granny’s bonnets)
- See 25 best self-seeding plants to save you time and money.
- See 25 best cottage garden plants
This is one of the most useful takeaways for home gardeners. A cottage garden isn’t usually rigidly planned plant by plant. It evolves as plants move around and settle where they’re happiest.
Clare describes the ideal cottage garden feeling as: ‘Lovely, just slightly teetering out of control.’ This arch bordering the Barn Garden at Great Dixter is framed by self-seeding cow parsley (which many gardeners think of as weeds).
Can you have a cottage garden with a modern house?
One of the biggest myths about cottage gardens is that you need a period property.
‘Everyone can have a cottage garden,’ says Clare. ‘That’s kind of the joy of it.’
In fact, cottage gardens originally evolved because cottages had small plots where people crammed fruit, vegetables and flowers together.
Clare points out that even small urban gardens can achieve the look.
‘We’ve featured gardens in the middle of London that I would say are cottage gardens just because they’re full of roses clambering over sheds and lots of really romantic old-fashioned planting.’
This is reassuring for anyone with a middle-sized or compact garden. The cottage garden style is far more about planting density and atmosphere than architecture.
Great Dixter’s historic charm adds hugely to the garden’s atmosphere, but you can have a cottage garden with a small modern house. Fill it with plants – and you’ll hardly see the house!
How do you stop a cottage garden looking messy?
This is probably the question gardeners worry about most.
‘How do you balance that beauty and abundance with that messy feeling?’ I asked Clare.
Her answer was interesting because it wasn’t about reducing plants. It was about adding structure.
She particularly admired a Yorkshire garden in the book where the owner used clipped topiary among the exuberant planting.
“You have the billowy sort of fulsome planting, but then a nice solid blob of green.”
Simple clipped shapes such as box balls, yew pyramids and other evergreen forms can stop the planting feeling chaotic.
Great Dixter does this famously, with gorgeous, huge topiary peacocks and other forms. Although this is ‘grand garden style’, the topiary is surrounded by meadow planting or abundant cottage garden self-seeders. It’s a stunning combination.
See: How to Use Easy Topiary Shapes in Stylish Ways
The contrast of topiary and meadow flowers at Great Dixter is utterly charming – so much more than sharply mown grass lawn. If you’d like a meadow lawn, see how to create a mini meadow lawn.
Dramatic topiary – but even the contrast of simple shapes with abundant planting will help stop the ‘messy’ feel. You can also create structure with clipped hedges and paths. People have used box (boxwood) in the past, but moths and blight mean that it’s better to plant alternatives. See the best three alternatives to box for topiary.
‘The Great Dixter topiary just seems to anchor everything and stop it from feeling like it’s about to get completely out of control.’
This idea also connects beautifully to something Clare discovered in a second-hand book by Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter.
He described cottage gardening as: ‘Bountiful yet regulated informality.’
That may be the best definition of a cottage garden I’ve ever heard.
Cottage garden paths and hard landscaping
Although planting dominates a cottage garden, the hard landscaping still matters.
Clare feels very modern, sleek materials can jar with the look. ‘I wouldn’t want some sort of brand new, very shiny porcelain tile, for example.’
Use what’s most easily available to you. You could buy new stone pavers and sets that look old. Or you can buy reclaimed stone and brick.
Old stone pavers and steps at Great Dixter. Some may look broken, but it all adds to the charm, as do the self-seeded erigeron (Mexican daisies) in the cracks of the steps.
The most inspiring examples in Clare’s Abundance & Beauty were often highly personal and handmade.
One gardener on the Isle of Mull created paths decorated with beachcombed finds, such as coiled rop, shells and found seaside objects.
‘Those kind of details just give the garden that homespun cottage feeling.’
Chestnut hurdle edging at Great Dixter. They make their edging and plant supports themselves, out of branches and prunings from the garden. That’s the spirit of British cottage garden style.
Recycled hard landscaping is always going to be more ‘cottage garden’ than new, so to find out more about it, see Eco-friendly garden design – what you need to know before you spend money.
Also see: 20+ creative, thrifty and sustainable garden recycling ideas and Recycled garden ideas from RHS Chelsea.
Cottage garden paths should usually include plants
One thing Clare noticed repeatedly was that cottage gardeners rarely leave hard landscaping alone.
“People just couldn’t resist adding plants.”
She describes paths softened with:
- Thyme planted between paving
- Sleeper-style stepping stones
- Self-seeders popping through cracks
- Informal edging
At Cotswolds gardener and writer Val Bourne had Dierama — angel’s fishing rods — springing up through paving.
“I can’t imagine a true cottage gardener just going for a really hard path of paving slabs with mortar in between.”
That’s a particularly useful lesson if you’re redesigning a garden: cottage gardens are usually softened at every opportunity.
See Garden path materials – the good, the bad & the beautiful.
Are cottage gardens low maintenance?
This is where Clare was very honest. ‘The gardens in the book are not low maintenance gardens.’
In one garden, the interview actually took place while the owner continued deadheading plants.
However, Clare also makes a really important distinction between lawns and borders.
‘I would rather have a massive border to look after than a lawn.’
Her argument is that established perennial planting can actually become relatively manageable once it fills out:
- Less bare soil means fewer weeds
- Plants support each other
- There’s often just one main annual cutback
‘As long as it’s established… all you have to do really is weed when it’s young and cut it back once a year.’
So while a cottage garden is not maintenance-free, it may not be as labour-intensive as people fear — especially once mature.
Great Dixter is not a low maintenance garden. And many of the gardeners in the Beauty & Abundance book are ‘plant nuts’, according to Clare. They are happy to make the extra effort to have a garden bursting with colour and texture. But if low maintenance is important to you, then it’s better to choose a different garden style. ‘The No Maintenance Cottage Garden’ is a myth. Or a downright lie!
For real low maintenance gardening advice, see:
The low maintenance garden that really looks fabulous
10 low maintenance plants for an instant, long-lasting garden
How to make gardening easier to manage this year.
The biggest takeaway from British cottage gardens
Perhaps the most surprising thing about cottage gardens is that they aren’t really about nostalgia or even cottages.
They’re about generosity.
Generous planting. Generous colour. Generous abundance.
And although the look appears relaxed and effortless, the best cottage gardens are carefully balanced between freedom and control.
When Clare was writing Beauty & Abundance, she researched vintage cottage garden books. She found one written by Christopher Lloyd, who originally created the Great Dixter Gardens.
He defined a cottage garden as ‘Bountiful yet regulated informality.’
There’s more cottage garden inspiration in the following posts:
How to create a contemporary cottage garden
How to create a rustic cottage garden on a budget
Cottage garden mash-up – how to create a cottage garden in a different climate.
Beauty & Abundance – British Cottage Gardens
Beauty & Abundance would make a wonderful present for what Clare calls ‘a plant nut’. Although you may have problems giving it away…
The photography of the gardens is stunning, due to photographer, Jonathan Buckley. But it is not just a glorious coffee table book – the interviews with the garden owners and designers are conversations between people who love plants and gardens and have years of experience creating them. You’ll find it a good read.
And if you haven’t visited Great Dixter, put it on your bucket list. It’s a really beautiful garden, as I hope you can see from these photos. See Great Dixter’s opening times here and find out more about their approach to biodiversity and the environment in 7 Lessons From Great Dixter, A Garden That Supports Wildlife and Looks Gorgeous.
Pin to remember British cottage garden style book and tips
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