While most people prefer their backyard gardens to be prim, proper, and reminiscent of traditional-style homes from the 90s, there’s been an ongoing trend of more expressive and abundant designs known as cottage gardens. Unlike your typical small-scale indoor succulents or potted plant projects, these designs heavily rely on the idea of letting everything grow out. Essentially, you’re left with a backyard garden that will begin to resemble Snow White’s home with the Seven Dwarfs.

However, there’s been an opposing viewpoint as well, calling these designs rather chaotic, excessive, and on the borderline of being aesthetic. So, today we’ll be exploring the key design elements behind a cottage-style garden and finding the answer ourselves. Hopefully, we’ll get to decide whether building a cottage garden is a worthwhile project or something you might want to avoid in the meantime.

Defining Features Of A Cottage Garden

As the name suggests, you want to think back to the days of old where everyone lived in small cottages during the medieval periods, much like the homes of hobbits and otherworldly beings found in fantasy novels. In a sense, your goal is to blend a bit of tradition with a touch of fantasy.

#1 Profuse And Abundant Planting

Number one, a cottage garden is defined by the presence of profuse and abundant planting. While most gardens are concerned with keeping everything clean and well-trimmed, a cottage-style design would prefer the opposite and let everything grow selectively without overshadowing the other plants. Contrary to what you might think, you will still need intensive and skillful maintenance with cottage gardens because you’re finding the golden mean between messy and artfully expressive.

• Wide Collection Of Flowers: In essence, you have freedom of choice as to what collection of flowers you want to showcase in your cottage garden. In fact, we would even recommend exploring some grafting to create some truly original designs with your choice of flowers. Just remember not to overdo it with rainbow colors everywhere.
• Fresh Vegetables And Herbs: Apart from flowers, cottage gardens are also known for growing fresh vegetables and herbs. You can section off a partition of the garden or maybe even use the majority of the backyard if you’re more fond of the caring and growing aspect of gardening. Plus, you get to pick out fresh ingredients for your next easy and healthy recipes.

#2 Natural-Looking Structures

Number two, a cottage-style garden design also relies on natural-looking structures to complete the look and bring out that cozy vibe that most cinematic cottages tend to radiate. From timber colors that have faded and blended into the color of the plants to larger stone structures that have been entwined with leaves and vines, the sky’s the limit when going for a naturalistic look.

• Rustic Furniture: When it comes to rustic furniture, you can go out of your way to find something that’s inherently rustic or maybe repurpose an older piece that’s been gathering dust in the attic. From old park benches to unused water features, you can turn anything into a rustic piece that would compliment and complete the look of a cottage garden.
• Weathered-Down Paths: Cottage-style gardens also make great use of weathered-down paths to appear down to Earth. Of course, we wouldn’t recommend going through each piece one by one because that would take forever. It’s smarter to wait for nature to do its thing and let it weather down over time. As for the choice of pavement, we recommend brick, stone, and gravel pathways as these provide the most texture.

#3 Tranquility In Chaos

Last but not least, you want to go a little extra with regular maintenance to achieve that sense of discovery, curiosity, and wonder that is integral to the cottage garden experience. It can take some time getting used to, but slowly work your way into finding that complete look that’s unique to your garden. It can take a couple of weeks before you find something you like, so just keep at it until you achieve tranquility in chaos.

However, Garden Upgrades Should Always Come Last

Cottage gardens are in the more expensive category of garden makeover projects, and they won’t shy away from taking a considerable amount (and more) from your budget. So, if there’s anything else around the house that needs fixing, like, let’s say, a furnace repair or roof gutter replacements, do those first because garden upgrades can always wait.

Building Your Own Fairytale

In conclusion, while cottage gardens can appear a bit excessive for some, there’s no denying that they offer a unique touch to home aesthetics and is akin to building your own fairytale out of your backyard. So, if you have nothing else important on the line and can afford to splurge on some garden improvements, then you can definitely give cottage gardens a chance to prove the naysayers wrong!

Meta title: Should You Consider Building A Cottage-Style Garden
meta desc: Home aesthetics and design are excellent ways to add value to the property, and one excellent area that can never get enough love is the backyard garden. Keep reading and find out whether building cottage-style gardens are an aesthetic or excessive project for you.