Tips for Planting a Cottage Garden! 🌸🌿// Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going in today's video i want to give you several tips on how to start a cottage style garden i've got this area right here full of gorgeous plants just kind of laid out how i i think i want them planted and i'll go into more detail about each one of these plants here later on in the video but what i have just quickly is cat mint a few roses some beautiful white fox glove ornamental onion some pink yarrow hooker and then possibly some veronica and the beautiful thing about cottage gardening is that there's so much freedom in it there is far fewer rules there are no two cottage gardens that are the same they very much so take on the personality of the gardener which i find very interesting so now that you kind of see how i have it laid out i want to go find a chair and i'm going to sit down and we'll go over some of the tips that i have for you today okay i'm much more comfortable now i do have 10 tips to share with you and i'll try to go through them quickly so we can get the plants in the ground because that's the most fun part anyway i do want to say a quick thank you to espoma for partnering with us on this video i'm going to be using a lot of their biotone starter fertilizer to get these plants in the ground today which i always use when i'm planting new things and i highly recommend it so my first tip is to not plant anything in straight lines when you do that it lends to more of a sense of formality in your garden it looks like you've got like soldiers standing in a row um like you're trying to plant a hedge which i also like formal gardens but it doesn't work as well for this style tip number two is to plant in large groupings instead of planting just one or two of a lot of different things instead we're planting a lot more of the same variety and that way we can distinguish what is in that flower bed if you get too many things going on it can tend to look like a jumbled mess and it doesn't give any rest for your eye your eye will not know what to land on in that bed so you know in this bed i'm planting a handful of different varieties but i've make making sure to plant at least three or five or seven and honestly number doesn't even matter in a cottage garden i know you've probably heard you don't need to plant in odd numbers well for your anchor plants that may be the case which i'll talk about in a second but when you're planting groupings of things it doesn't matter if you plant four or five of something you won't be able to tell in the end tip number three is that spacing doesn't matter quite as much in cottage style gardening so you don't actually want to space your plants as far apart as the tag says because in cottage gardening we want everything to marry together and blend together we want one variety of plant to move really gracefully into the next variety of plant without there being a bunch of space in between so you can really kind of fit a lot more in a cottage style bed than you can in a traditional flower bed the fourth tip is to create harmony with color and i know that this can be a little bit overwhelming because you go to the garden center and you love everything you want to plant all the things in your flower bed and i totally understand that but what i like to do in this style of bed is i like to just pick a few different colors and kind of go with that kind of color palette so that i can repeat variations of those colors in the same space that way as you're moving down there's nothing jarring it's very peaceful and it really easy transitions from one plant to the next cottage gardens to me and they're all personal preference but i like softer colors i like purples pinks blues whites and light yellow and kind of this peachy apricot color and so that's what i've picked for this whole area so as we move through there's nothing like bright orange or bright red that jumps out and is screaming at you it all has a very harmonious look and i think that that's kind of important for this style of garden so i like the more soft colors but i know a lot of you guys like more jewel tones more colors that kind of pack a punch so choose those you know do oranges and bright yellows and reds and more deep purples and use that as your color palette and repeat those colors throughout your bed instead of tossing in a really soft pink or something like that that can kind of throw that color harmony off tip number five and this kind of goes for all flower beds is to choose things that have different heights textures bloom times so that you have interest all the time so like with the plants that i've chosen for this area they're all very green in terms of foliage color but they are all very different so the ornamental onion has the kind of strappy grass-like foliage the rose foliage is much more glossy than the rest foxglove has a bold foliage and then we've got yarrow that's more feathery and then the heuchera has a little bit more of a silver overlay over the leaves so they all are different enough that they'll all kind of shine in their own way and then the heights are going to be very different i'll have my higher things kind of toward the back but height in a cottage garden is a little bit interesting because i have my roses in sort of a zigzag pattern and so some of my rose height is going to be pushed forward a little bit while i tuck some perennials in around the back to give it a little bit more interest and a little bit more movement tip number six is to add some sort of structural element or anchor plant and this area has a lot of structure around it it's not a very big flower bed but i've got a fence right behind me there's a walkway right in front of it and then there's an arbor not far away there's a you know trellis right here so there's a lot going on in terms of structure but i am putting an anchor plant in here as well i've got roses which are my flowering shrub anchor plant and then i'll fill in with kind of my fluffy more blooming perennials all the way around them and you can use a lot of different things for your structure pieces or your anchor plants if you need to bring a sense of formality to the area if it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere and you've cut out a big section of grass or something and there's nothing behind it kind of creating a wall you can use evergreens evergreens are a great anchor piece in any flower bed they will bring us bring a sense of sort of a sense of formality a little bit of rest and wait for your eyes and a little it'll bring some order like a sense of order to the space so it's all not just a jumble of flowers and some of you may prefer that that's the wonderful thing about cottage gardening you don't have to use an anchor piece if you don't want to or you can you can add in some structural pieces like pieces of willow fencing or like little sections of picket fencing or any kind of decorative element you want a fountain or a container this one is so based on personal preference that that's i think where a lot of interest comes in and so right here i've got the lady gardner roses which are my anchor plant tip number seven is fragrance and i think this is really important in all gardens most especially cottage gardens because we don't want just bloom so we want them to smell really nice we want to hit that that sense of ours you know and kind of draws you in so you can do all kinds of different things in terms of fragrance you can plant roses like i'm doing today lavender their chocolate cosmos you can put a topiary or an obelisk in the middle of your flower bed and grow honeysuckle or sweet peas up it there's a lot of different options for that but that's just something to think about and the eighth tip it's not really a tip it's just kind of something that goes along with cottage gardening is that they don't have to be perfectly maintained that's not what this type of garden is about it's not about perfection so if you want to get out there and deadhead and get your you know keep everything really pruned nicely and like really tidy you can do that because i do tend to like to keep my roses deadheaded and things like that but you don't have to in a cottage garden situation so once you get everything filled up you know in fact you don't even have as many weeds when you have a lot of perennials going on because they just have so much competition they tend to not grow i find that you know i have very little maintenance when i actually fill up a flower bed as full as i'm gonna do it today number nine is just something to watch out for when you're putting in a cottage garden and that is that your cottage garden will not look the same from year to year it will change drastically usually from year to year because a lot of times we're using perennials that like to self-seed like foxglove we're using things like catman that like to spread a little bit and so one year you might love the combination and how everything's playing together but then the year after you might think you know what i need to spend some time in there digging some things out and moving them to another area of my garden so that there's a little bit more room for everything else you know it's just an evolving process and it's just a good thing to know that brings me to tip number 10 and that is that the cottage garden does not happen overnight you know a lot of the time especially in a larger size flower bed like this is small so i'm packing it out today but in a really big size flower bed most people can't go out there and deck the whole thing out in one year or two or three it's an evolving process where every year you're adding more things in and that's totally fine you know you might designate where you want a specific perennial and just plant two or three in that spot knowing that those plants are going to grow and expand and you can divide them and make your clump bigger from year to year also it's a good idea to start some things from seed throw in some cosmo seeds or zinnias or even do some perennials i've done echinacea and rudbeckia and salvias i've done a lot of those things from a seed and it works really really well so if you like kind of more of that process you know definitely don't shy away from seeds and don't worry if you're not filling up your area really quickly because it's just something that happens over time i saw this is the first time where it kind of like hit home to me i saw a um a border going in in an estate in england and it was completely blank slate there was a beautiful wall right behind it and i don't know if i have a picture i'll see if i can find one but it was i don't even know how big it was like maybe 20 feet deep and it was super long and it was just a bunch of four inch plants they had sitting on the ground and it just kind of struck home to me i thought you know what even these estate gardens it takes years to get the flower borders to look the way that they want them to look it's just a process so anyway those are my 10 tips now i want to get all of these in the ground i'm going to kind of manipulate them a little bit i just kind of plunked them out here thinking i kind of liked the the way they looked i have four roses here i might pair it down to three so let me do a little move in here we'll get them in the ground and then we'll give you a tour and show you how it all looks [Music] so so i've got it all planted and i absolutely love how it turned out i think the color blend is beautiful the texture blend is wonderful and i can't wait to see it fill in i mean that's one of the best parts is to see the plants just growing together and covering all of the soil that's kind of the goal for me because the less soil i see the less weeds i have because the plants will kind of act as their own weed suppression mulch when they cover that soil so first layer right here this is called cat's pajamas nepeta it's a type of cat mint that grows about 12 to 14 inches tall and it will spread out on its own about 18 to 20 inches so i did space them kind of closer together than they needed to be because they will fill in this little area and i did want to start with something lower right here toward the front part of the walkway so my anchor plant so there are four of them i ended up using all four roses are called the lady gardener and i absolutely love just that kind of cream on the outside with that blushy apricot in the middle now these only grow about three feet tall and two and a half feet wide that's why i figured i could fit all four roses in here and i think that they work out really nice and they will be kind of my larger plants in this area then right here we've got the foxy hybrids fox glove i love these these are a biennial which means they kind of fizzle out after two years but they do self-seed so i'm hoping that they seed themselves all over in this area so the foxy hybrids variety is kind of a blend like you could get a whole flat of them and you might get some whites you might get some pinks so i'm hoping that these stay even when they seed they may not stay white but they'll still be in the white and pink family so i think we'll be really good there in terms of color blends this is a new one for next year for 2020 this is called a serendipity allium an ornamental onion that grows about 15 to 20 inches tall about a 10 to 15 inch spread and i used four of them in here kind of as a sort of drift sort of there is a rose in the middle but i kind of like that so we've got the group of plants and then the rose will kind of rise up from the middle of that drift and then right in front i had a little spot that i wanted to add a little bit of sparkle so this is a blushing princess lobularia or sweet alyssum this will absolutely fill in this whole area it'll probably come out onto the walkway these are wonderful plants to fill in spaces and this area is full sun and most of these plants will do like either want part to full sun we tossed a shade up so it was easier to see detail but i think all these plants will really thrive in this area and then this one here is called a firefly amethyst achillea or yarrow that's also a new one for next year i love that color of pink i think it's just so sweet with the purple and with the color of the rose it grows about 18 to 22 inches tall and spreads out like really really far like 30 inches so that is one um that i mean it'll take a little while for it to spread out that far but i will be dividing and taking pieces off of it and putting it elsewhere in my garden um and then as we move this way whoops almost ran into my stand for the uh shade uh as we move this way i've got some hookers right here these are called dolce spearmint and i love the foliage on those because it's such a cooling color it just looks like refreshing right here and these will spread out quite a bit like about maybe 16 20 22 inches so i'm hoping that this is just a really nice thick drift of spearmint hook right here and this is my foliage like you know it does bloom these bright pink blooms on long stalks but this is not why i'm growing it so much as for the foliage so but it is nice that there is a little color there as well and the last thing i planted and this was a last minute edition is this brother stefan clematis i just had this little hole right here that i needed something vertical um so i decided to put that there and it can just ramble on this fence and just have this really nice beautiful like kind of periwinkle bluish lavender i don't even know how to explain that color it's beautiful and the brother stefan blooms all throughout the summer with these gorgeous flowers and it's a really easy one to prune i know clematis can be a little bit tricky that way this one you want to prune to about three feet from the base in early early spring so that means i'll probably come in and clean it up right up to the fence rail so it grows like five to seven feet so i'm kind of hoping to kind of trail it this way and have it mound up here so anyway i'm really excited to see how this area kind of comes together after it's grown a little bit and that's kind of the makings of a cottage garden and kind of some of the guidelines i follow when i'm starting a new area so i hope you guys found this video helpful and we will see you in the next one bye [Music] you

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 1,488,890

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: ikOPLN8cI18

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2019