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Cottage Garden Style Today

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted, including any photos, by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

Fantasy, Renegade, Tacky or Sweet?

How do you see the cottage garden style?

From The Old House Journal we read about The Cottage Garden in historical perspective. In part, that description of cottage garden carefully explains that, by the 1800's

"...the real cottage garden had been idealized into a fantasy endowed with all the virtues felt to be missing from contemporary life: simplicity, purity, artlessness, and the "noble" plants of the past. Nostalgic or forgotten plants gained momentum ..."

Somehow I don't think too much has changed, do you?

All thoughts of fantasy aside, cottage gardeners are very practical gardeners. I like to think we are renegades of a sort with a "show me so I see it with my own eyes and maybe I'll believe it" attitude.

I do not use the word renegade lightly. I borrowed it from an opinionated gardener. The self-titled Renegade Gardener follows that "show me" philosophy with some success. He also terms lawn mowing the gardening chore equivalent of cleaning toilets. And he gardens in the far north where it is cold, so zone 2, 3 and 4 residents especially, take special note!

But what is a cottage garden? Here is an absolutely "real" one, an authentic poet's cottage garden no less. Dove Cottage in front view, and again in another view and description. Dove Cottage does not meet my expectations for a cottage garden. Does it meet yours?

How about this carefully researched Cottage Garden in Utah -- for a house of the formal style of Second Empire. There is a certain sense of disproportionality between house and garden. There is a sense of self consciousness, too. And yet, I like it.

How about this New Zealand Garden? Is it too big, too country, too something? Moosey's Garden -- you be the judge. I was tickled to notice that all ten of the top "seeders" grow in my garden, too!

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