Defining the New American Cottage Garden

Native plants and indigenous materials are part of a new American twist on an old English garden theme

Several years ago , a husband - and - married woman team oftravelwriters from Englandwas tour Colorado and stopped by to see my garden . After walking inthe garden and compare our gardeningexperiences , success and nonstarter , we headed indoors to miss the intenseJulyheat . Over cold-blooded glasses of lemonade , one of my guests teased , “ Well , you ’ve for sure out - cottaged anycottage gardenwe’ve ever see in England . ”

Up until that breaker point I ’d never really thought of my garden as a bungalow garden , per se . I certainly had no special vogue in mind when I built it . My visitor ’s input was tender at least partly tongue - in - brass , prompted by the unthinkably orotund act of works I have stuffed into a very small property .

On contemplation , however , I ’ve get to realize that many of the elements of the classical English cottage garden are at workplace in my garden and the 10000 like it popping up all over on this side of the Atlantic .

In America , “ bungalow garden ” has always been a catchall term used to name a garden that is abound at the seams and does not otherwise adjust to a recognisable panache . But these gardens , while extremely individualist , do portion out a few common characteristics . Typically , they are small , casually informal , residential properties that brush off established landscape tenets . Instead of wide lawns and prim foundation planting , there are lavishly planted flower gardens emphasise with rugged , native plants . Front yard , formerly open to public view , have been confine and transmute intointimate spaces . Hardscaping is usually minimal , but most of these cottage gardens are bisected by a path and many admit fences , trellises , and patios build of natural , autochthonous material . Thanks to the aboriginal plants and local building cloth , these gardens also capture a smack typical to their region .

Cottage gardeners ignoretraditional design elements

bungalow gardens are always thick , typically a tail - acre or less in size . A brisk , two - minute walk will usuallytake in the entire garden . Because spaceis at such a premium , the garden inevitably gather right up against the household , completely embrace it . Invariably , the menage is modestly sized as well , but it is still the garden ’s dominant , primal lineament . It is the“cottage ” of the cottage garden , even though literal bungalow are rarified in most of America . I theorize we couldcall our version “ firm gardens , ” but thenwe would lose the romantic connotation .

Whatever we call them , cottage garden share another trait — they seem tobe unstudied , and oblivious to accepted landscape designing rule . Formal elements like tidy lawns , sweepingvistas , reflecting pool , traditional perennialborders , and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree - lined walks simply do not fit . Instead , cottage gardensexhibit a casual , unplanned naivete . Self - sowing annualsmay help to create random but pleasing plant combinations .

Sometimes their genius stem from the tomfoolery of personal whims . In a outburst of hunch , a gardener may find unexampled life for an onetime , chuck out target . A rust lawn mower might be put towork as a trellis for morning glory vines , or colorful coffee cups converted to dangle decorations . Such quirky garden “ artwork ” has a spontaneityperfectly suited to a bungalow garden .

Abundant plantings are a cottage gardenhallmark

Sheer numbers do n’t often count for much , but a plethora of plants is one of the defining characteristics of the traditional English cottage garden . This is true of both the genuine article — the working person ’s base home surround by vegetable , fruit , herbaceous plant , and bloom — and of the 19th - century idealise version , with a storybook cottage adrift in a sea of flowers .

And this abundance is a authentication of the new cottage gardens blossomingall over this commonwealth . In my own grounds - wrench - garden , every square column inch of space is packed with plants , but I ’ll never admit there ’s not elbow room for more . In a distinctive Modern American cottage garden , walls and fence are lined with trellises groan under the weightiness oframbling roses , clematis , and other vines . porch or patio sport so many container there ’s barely room to get through to the room access . Conventional foundation planting composed of deal of matching or modeled shrubs were torn out long ago , to make way for more roses or a strawberry mark patch . Lawns are never a major portion of the bungalow garden ; they are either nonexistent or inconsequent .

Native plants provide a sturdy framework

Within the restraint of mood , American cottage garden are certain to contain a good number of traditional English bungalow garden plants — sure-enough - fashioned favorites like peonies , iris , lilacs , rose , and clematis . Traditionally , bungalow gardeners have a special warmheartedness for self - sowing annuals and biennial , institute that more sophisticated gardeners might consider weeds . Larkspur ( Consolidaajacis ) , yearly poppy ( Papaverspp . ) , Canterbury bell shape ( Campanula medium ) , Johnny start - ups ( Viola tricolour ) , and hollyhocks ( Alcea rosea ) start up each spring to fill every nook and cranny , sum up to the garden ’s overstuff , well-fixed ambience .

But in addition to such standby , many American bungalow gardeners are adding local wildflower and native industrial plant . In a sense , they are continuing a long tradition — cottage gardeners have always looked to nearby fields and woodwind instrument for inspiration . In fact , the first cottage flowers were undoubtedly simple wildflower that caught the fancy of the playing area worker or housewife gathering firewood for the kinsperson ’s hearth .

away from that tradition , however , contemporary American cottage gardenersare create the significant find that regional botany will thrive with minimum care in their be filth and mood . Native plants have had millennia to accommodate to local conditions such as rainfall , land composition , wintertime cold , and summer heat — conditions that in many portion of the country threaten the very life of plants from more exonerative environs . Growing peonies in Nevada , for example , may be impossible without abundant soil amendment , irrigation , and mint of fussy attention . ANevada aboriginal works , on the other hand , could just be come out in the ground to expand with little attending . The aboriginal flora ’ leisurely position wooing bungalow horticulture ’s casual atmosphere as well .

Even more significantly , native plants have a regionally appropriate “ look ” or “ feel . ” When used in a garden , native wildflower , trees , and shrub put up an echo of the wall landscape painting and help link up one to the other . We ’ve used Southwestern indigene such as fernbush ( Chamaebatiaria millefolium ) , dwarf rabbitbrush ( Chrysothamnus nauseosus ) , winecups ( Callirhoe involucrata ) , and an categorisation of plains and abandon cacti and penstemons that savor our harsh climate . Our comparatively meager rainfall of 15 inch per class is sufficient for them . These sun- and heat - lover are a challenge to grow where the weather is bed wetter and milder , and their success here attests that this is assuredly a Colorado cottage garden .

Elsewhere in the land , different plant palettes are more appropriate . Trilliums andHepaticaspecies , aggregator ’ rarities in many role of the country , show up in shady turning point of northeastern bungalow gardens , play up the classifiable character of this area . Tropicals like philodendron and bougainvillea stoolpigeon into frost - free California and Gulf Coast garden to make an entirely different , yet still appropriate , perspective there .

Use tough, look-alike plantsinstead of finicky favorites

After a X of subsist in Holland and England , my family and I moved into our home in Aurora , Colorado , in 1987 . I had visions of English bungalow garden and sublime demesne still dancing in my head and was determined to have a unsparing flower garden to rival any I had see in England . But there are only a few sections of the country with climates like enough to England ’s to originate the hang glide delphiniums and lupin of stereotypical British bungalow gardens . Colorado is n’t one of them .

I set out to get hold a mode to have the bestof both worlds . That first year I made scale drawings , started chatter country nurseries , and attended xeriscape course of instruction to become familiar with plants that adapt well to this semi - desiccated region . Our sign of the zodiac pose on what was once a short-grass prairie , so a scope of decorative grasses and plains wildflowers seemed only natural . The foothills and canyonlands to the Benjamin West provided us with a horde of ideas for shrub and trees .

I soon discovered that even in semi - desiccate parts of the country , American gardeners can emulate the smell of the English prototype by trying like plant with more furrowed demeanors . Here in Colorado , I looked for plants with scrappy disposal . Many of my most reliable plants are far too invasive for gardens in more temperate climates . But ruffians such as yarrow ( Achilleaspp . ) and bellflower ( Campanulaspp . ) become well-nigh tractable when subjected to Colorado ’s austere regimen . Roses are essential to the cottage garden but intercrossed tea rosebush rarely live our bitterly inhuman wintertime . I ’ve had upright fortune with the weather - resistive Canadian Explorer and Parkland series and the hardiest of the sometime - fashioned rose . Roses will never clamber over our cap as they did in England , but they are undeniably romantic just the same .

Use hardscape with a regional flavor

Structure in bungalow gardens is of minimum grandness and is often restrain to manner of walking , trellises and , now and then , fencing . Materials are mere , even rustic , and not infrequently , recycle . This is where regional peculiarities really remain firm out . stock split rail fences look as if they belong in the Benjamin West , while picket fences have more of midwestern or northeast flair .

diachronic influence may also play a purpose in the choice of materials . The bungalow gardener is inclined to reap the spoils of urban renewal . fling architectural bits and piece gain newpotential in garden building projects . Well - wear out cobblestones rescued from bit - of - the - century street might berecycled into rustic walkways and walls . In my own garden , my hubby and I built a monolithic arbor of crude - hand-hewn cedar and redwood in a simple , southwestern ramada expressive style . Inspired by local history , we replaced our concrete pavement with red flagstone slabs like those we had seen in nearby older neighborhood . Rock garden , though not something you would usually encounter in a cottage garden , further tie us to this region by reflecting the dominate presence of the Rocky Mountains .

More decorative frame of ornamentation offer further clue to regional indistinguishability . American cottage gardener have always cast on their immediate environs for inspiration and materials . seaboard cottages are often decorated with seashells , driftwood , and marine geegaws . southwest gardeners cocker in such cliches as hanging moo-cow skullson their fencing Post and employ woodenwagon wheels for all personal manner of uses .

Variations on this theme are endless

I never set out to create a novel kind of cottage garden , much less one that would be part of what is emerge as a classifiable , North American garden stylus . My original design called for conventional lawns surrounded by flower moulding , but the garden take on a life of its own . Currently , century of species of flowers , vegetables , fruit , vine , shrubs , and tree partake this quad in a riot of colour and texture .

Our English visitant was right in the end — we have created a stochastic variable on the traditional bungalow garden . But ratherthan slavishly imitate a strange esthetic , our garden reinterprets the English model with an unmistakable Coloradan emphasis . The same esthetic is being replayed in numberless dialects throughout America . Midwestern gardens are lead off to feature a tall-grass prairie paper . Coastal chaparral plants are making theirway into California garden . Woodland blossom fete the Northeast . What is developing is a distinctive young expressive style — the raw American bungalow garden .

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