Taken from BBC website By Alan Titchmarsh.You don’t need a gingerbread cottage in the country to have a cottage garden. Old-fashioned flowers and a cluttered ‘look’ usually suits more traditional-style properties, but it’s a good style for plant lovers with small gardens just about anywhere, as it allows you to pack lots of colour and interest into a small space. http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/htbg2/flat/module3/ Top 10 plants for a cottage garden Don’t worry about finding authentic old-fashioned flowers; a colourful mixture of bulbs, perennials and flowering shrubs creates a chocolate box look with more structure and year-round appeal than a real cottage garden ever had.

Latin name: Delphinium Common name: Delphinium Type of plant: Herbaceous perennial Soil preference: Fertile, well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Various shades of blue, also mauve, white Height and spread: 1.5m x 50cm (5ft x 1.6ft) depending on variety Description: These classic, cottage garden favourites produce spires of flowers in summer. Design tips: Use among shrubs or towards the back of a sunny, sheltered border. Stake plants with canes.

Latin name: Allium hollandicum‘Purple Sensation’ Common name: Ornamental onion Type of plant: Summer-flowering bulb Soil preference: Well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Deep violet Height and spread: 1m x 7cm (3ft x 3in) Description: These stylish bulbs produce violet, pompon-like flowers in early summer. Design tips: Dot between shrubs and slightly shorter perennials, such as lavenders

Latin name: Buddleja davidii‘Nanho Blue’; also know as B. davidii 'Nanho Petite Indigo'. Common name: Butterfly bush Type of plant: Deciduous shrub Soil preference: Most soil types Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Purple-red Height and spread: 1.5m x 1.5m (5ft x 5ft) Description: This tough, deciduous shrub is covered with butterflies when it blooms in summer. Design tips: Use at the back of a mixed border, or with trees. Regular, hard pruning is essential.

Latin name: Rudbeckia fulgidavar. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’Common name: Black-eyed Susan Type of plant: Herbaceous perennial Soil preference: Most reasonable soil Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Golden yellow with black ‘eyes’ in centre Height and spread: 5cm x 5cm (2in x 2in) Description: This perennnial’s daisy-like flowers brighten up the garden from mid-summer to autumn. Design tips: Use in cottage garden borders with other perennials and/or shrubs.

Latin name: Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’ Common name: Hardy geranium Type of plant: Herbaceous perennial Soil preference: Most soils Hardiness: hardy Flower colour: Lavender-blue Height and spread: 30cm x 30cm (1ft x 1ft) Description: Hardy geraniums are indispensable for their colourful flowers and amenable growing habits. Design tips: Good ground cover under roses and other flowering shrubs, or for the front of a flower border. Latin name: Dianthus Common name: Pinks Type of plant: Evergreen perennial Soil preference: Very well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Various shade of pink, mauve, white Height and spread: 30cm x 30cm (12in x 12in) Description: A great favourite, thanks to their clove-scented blooms. Design tips: Good for raised beds, large containers or the front of very sunny beds. Latin name: Echinacea purpurea Common name: Coneflower Type of plant: Perennial Soil preference: Well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Mauve with a brown cone in centre Height and spread: 1.5m x 60cm (4ft x 3ft) Description: Creates interest from mid-summer through to autumn, thanks to its daisy-like flowers, which are followed by striking seed-heads. Design tips: Use towards the back of a mixed, cottage flower border, or between shrubs. Latin name: Foeniculum vulgare‘Purpureum’ Common name: Purple fennel Type of plant: Short-lived perennial Soil preference: Well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Yellow Height and spread: 1.8m x 60cm (6ft x 2ft) Description: Grown for its feathery bronze foliage. Be careful as it self-seeds in profusion. Design tips: Use as a foliage plant among a mixture of colourful perennials in a cottage style border. Latin name: Euphorbia characiassubsp ‘Wulfenii’ Common name: Spurge Type of plant: Evergreen perennial Soil preference: Well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Lime-green Height and spread: 90cm x 90cm (3ft x 3ft) Description: This dramatic perennial produces stunning, lime-green flowers in early summer. Design tips: Good specimen plants that are invaluable for giving a cottage border a winter ‘backbone’. Latin name: Achillea ‘Coronation Gold’ Common name: Milfoil, yarrow Type of plant: Evergreen perennial Soil preference: Moist, but well drained Hardiness: Hardy Flower colour: Golden yellow Height and spread: 90cm x 45cm (2ft x 1.5ft) Description: The bright yellow flowers of this perennial are followed by beautiful seed-heads. Design tips: Use towards the front of cottage-style borders. Path basics You need two kinds of paths in a cottage garden. The practical sort that are used for getting people from A-B, such as from the garden gate to the front door. These paths need solid foundations, a generous width, and they should take the shortest possible route. The second type of path are the frivolous kind. These are designed to slow you down, allowing you to dawdle and enjoy the flowers. They need be narrower, winding and more decorative. Choosing a surface There are many different surfaces that you can use for paths, including: Gravel Gravel is a popular choice for front paths, drives and seating areas as it’s cheap and quick and easy to lay. Rake gravel over a base of pounded-down rubble. Cobbles Cobbled setts need cementing in place and can be quite difficult to walk on so they make a good surface for paths that aren’t designed for those in a hurry. York stone York stone is beautiful-looking paving for seating areas, but don’t use it where you need to walk regularly in winter as it’s dangerously slippery when wet. Bark Bark is ideal for temporary paths and it’s a good alternative to lawn or paving in shady spots where other surfaces grow green slime. Wood Wooden decking or sleepers make good paths near a pond or bog garden, or as an informal ‘bridge’ over a stream or ditch. Tack wire netting over the decking to make it non-slip or alternatively power wash the timber twice a year to prevent slipperiness. Paving slabs Paving slabs are a good all-round choice. Use them for seating areas and practical paths, or sink them in grass or gravel as stepping stones. Pathside planting Cottage gardens are full of detail, and one of the best ways of adding interest to a cottage garden path is by outlining it with a formal or informal row of plants. It also makes a good contrast with whatever is on either side of the path, whether it’s a lawn or a jumble of flowers. There are many different plants you can use, including: Box balls Box balls, being evergreen, give the garden year-round detail. Plant them in a border or better still grow them in classy terracotta ‘long tom’ flowerpots and stand them in position. This way you can move them around the garden. Forsythia Forsythia makes a solid, late spring-flowering hedge that grows just tall enough to stop you seeing over the top, so it’s good for dividing the garden into smaller ’rooms’. Lavender Lavender create a fragrant, evergreen, dwarf hedge which can be upright and clipped or allowed to spill gently over the path for a more romantic effect, depending on the variety you choose. Planting distance The next decision to make is how far apart you want to put these plants. Box balls Clipped balls of box, about 45cm (18in) in diameter and spaced six feet apart, add a formal note to the edge of a riotous, cottage flower border. They also look good where a path runs along the edge of a lawn. When a row of box balls are planted very close together the ‘topiary’ effect disappears and they look like a low hedge that didn’t quite turn out right. Besides looking over-fussy, they are difficult to trim. A row of clipped dwarf box edging might be worth considering instead. Forsythia A row of forsythia bushes adds a slight air of mystery to a path, as you need to look around them to see the garden beyond. When space is short you have room to grow flowers in-between them. Trim them into conical shapes after flowering each year to keep them looking tidy. Planted roughly 60-90cm (2-3ft) apart, forsythia makes a superb formal, clipped, flowering hedge that suits a cottage garden perfectly. It will look less strident if you cut an occasional arch or peephole so you can see through into the next garden ‘room’. Lavender Repeating the same plant regularly at intervals along a narrow pathside border creates a ‘link’ that pulls a typical random mixture of cottage garden plants together, adding a sense of order to apparent chaos. A continuous row of lavenders planted 30cm (1ft) apart makes a classic, scented cottage garden, path edging, and attracts bees in droves. Trim the plants lightly each year in late summer as soon as the flowers have faded, to stop plants from becoming woody. Principles of cottage planting Cottage gardens break all the usual rules of garden design, which in any case are only guidelines. In a cottage garden, plants are grown very close together, and they are meant to look as if they were put together at random, without any real plan behind them. But in practise it takes a certain amount of thought to create a garden that looks entirely natural. Planting  There are several ways you can arrange plants in your border, including: Rows Rows look very formal. The place they usually look best is along the edge of paving or a path, but you can also use a row of identical plants to edge a cottage garden border as it ‘pulls together’ a randomly generated collection of plants. Drifts Drifts make very natural-looking beds. Informal teardrop shapes work best. If you have uneven ground simply outline the high or low lying contours and use those shapes for your drifts. They will automatically look right for the spot. Put your tallest plants in the middle and shortest ones around the edge so that you can look at the drift from any angle and it will still look good. Random planting Random planting is typical of old-fashioned cottage gardens, where annuals were left to self-seed inbetween aggressive, spreading perennials. Just weed out what you don’t want. Be careful as the result can either look very natural or a complete mess. Grouped Grouped by height, colour or plant type, cottage borders are a lot easier to organise. The usual arrangement is to put the tallest plants at the back and shortest ones at the front, so you can see everything. But why not have the odd island of taller plants in a carpet of shorter flowers so you have to look round them? The long and the short of cottage garden design is ‘do whatever you think looks best’. Remember if it doesn’t work out, you can always dig plants up and move them. Cottage garden tips Cottage gardens don’t have to take hours to look after; by choosing the right type of features you can plan a garden that almost takes care of itself. Hard landscape Cottage gardens are all about plants. Hard landscaping, such as paths, seating areas and containers, is just there to help you enjoy them. Hard surfaces contrast well with plants so use them to break up large areas of planting. Climbers Several different climbers can share the same support, whether it is a tree, pergola or arbour. It’s a good space-saving technique that creates colourful features for months on end. Containers Containers are the convenient way to add lots of extra colour around your back door, close to seats and benches, and on the patio. Recycled objects Old bits and bobs like chimney pots, earthenware land drainage pipes and bottomless metal buckets can be recycled to make authentic, aged features that all add to the character of a cottage garden. Summary Cottage gardens are all about charm and character, but they rely on the same basic principles as any other style of garden. Start by creating a basic shape of hard landscaping, then add ‘core’ trees, shrubs and perennials that give the garden its personality. Leave the fine detail until last.