Garden Guide With James Kilkelly

AFTER last week's excursion into Mediterranean-styled gardens I thought this week we might look at a style a little closer to home; cottage garden style. Although you'll stumble across this style more frequently in Ireland than say the Mediterranean style, it's still rare enough so as to be a bit different to the norm. What do you picture when a cottage garden is mentioned? To many people this term conjures up images of gardens filled with colourful summer blooms, only to become empty of flower or leaf during autumn and winter. Other people will think of a landlord's estate grounds, staffed by teams of garden workers, who look after the all the deadheading, pruning, staking, mulching, feeding, watering and division. Now those impressions may have been the way cottage garden themes were thought of in the past. Today, however, this style can be created with much less fuss. In fact cottage-styled gardens are actually seeing a bit of a mini revival. The resurrection of the cottage garden has been coaxed along by gardening gurus in the press and on television, however it is the homeowners who have been the real driving force. Many homeowners, having become tired of the never-ending cycle of feeding, spraying and mowing lawns, have decided to decrease the size of these green areas. Instead, they began replanting them with colourful perennials or herbaceous plants. This solution is also suitable for the homeowner who becomes sick of having the same mirror image lawn as his neighbour. I can tell you there is nothing like a cottage garden overflowing with perennial borders to change that situation. The basics Cottage garden layouts usually centre on the standard shapes of squares and rectangles as they make up pathways, flower beds etc. However the squares and rectangles are rarely discernible once the cottage garden gets to about two years old. This is due to the abundance of planting softening and breaking all harsh lines, so I suppose you could class the cottage garden as a good balance of formality and informality. Of course squares and rectangles may be revealed in winter when annual or perennial plants die down until spring. This is because traditionally the vast majority of plants in a cottage garden were perennials and annuals, with all plants clumped together for maximum impact. The modern day cottage garden designer has found ways to combat this autumn/winter lull in plant structure and flower however, and I will fill you in on this in due course. A question The first and probably most important point to consider when selecting the cottage garden style for your site is to ask yourself if your house is too modern looking to carry this type of old world themed garden. If your house has a very modern appearance then a cottage garden may jar with it. If that is your situation (modern house), then there is a compromise available to you where the cottage garden can be sectioned off from the house by means of creating a transitional neutral style garden area between them. A grassed strip paired with a neutral green hedge and entrance arch is an ideal transitional area between the modern house and the old fashioned garden. You may like to use a pathway to link these areas together. This is one of those touches of formality I mentioned earlier, a central path like an elongated rectangle that can be constructed from reclaimed brick or quarry stone cobbles. The central path can lead to the front door or down along the rear garden, or both. The pathways can even be formed from gravel or compacted earth. Both these finishing materials leave the prospect for self-seeding of baby plants from the existing cottage garden residents. This self-seeding and the way in which cottage gardeners will often allow mosses, lichens and creeping plants to grow between the gapped joints of paving tells us one main thing. That is that the cottage garden style is not for the gardener seeking a clinically clean and uncluttered outside space. If you're still onboard with this 'rough around the edges' effect then next week I will have more on the cottage garden and its planting. Until then, happy gardening and remember that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.