Cottage Gardens

About this book

The cottage-garden style has been part of British gardening for centuries. The first cottage gardeners had little time space and money and designed simple and practical settings for their homes which in time developed into more elaborate and sometimes extravagant gardens. In this book Geoff Hamilton looks to the superb old cottages of the past and adapts the more popular features to modern gardens. In building three cottage gardens from scratch at his home in Barnsdale he sets out to simplify the practical problems of creating a natural rustic look and shows how to build new constructions such as arbours and bowers arches seats and boundaries to suit readers budgets. A diverse selection of planting plans emphasizing colour schemes and perfume with explanations of how to cultivate cottage-style plants has also been included. Practical advice covers a variety of subjects such as herbaceous plants roses perennials and annuals climbers bulbs containers herbs vegetables and fruit.