The "English Garden"

[lupinfarm]

We need to do some landscaping of the front garden this year. Basically it's been just an empty patch with a picket fence, and a large limestone raised kitchen garden by the front door for the past year. It's north facing but gets quite a substantial amount of sun on a regular day due to us being on the top of a hill! Both my parents are English ex-pats (though, I suspect, my mum would like to be a current Pat back in England ) and I have very fond memories of playing in my Nan's garden in Essex which was done in a knot style, but less rigid and more organized chaos. Very traditional "English Cottage Garden" style.

We are *really* looking for organized chaos. The kind of garden you have to fight through and worry about being sucked up by a random plant, never to be seen again. Inspiration..

http://environmentalgeography.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/english-garden-landscape-design-2.jpg

http://www.wayfaring.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/english_garden.jpg

http://decorvillage.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/go-informal.jpg

We cannot dig down into the existing soil though, as we're on mostly rock and a variety of large roots run through the yard from dead and living trees. Mostly dead. I also want low maintenance. I've come up with a great plan to use 12" deep raised beds filled with soil, painted, and arranged in a knot garden style. We'll have 4 main beds, with a cut off at the inner corner, in the middle of the congregation of beds we'll have a fruiting crabapple (or heavily scented lilac tree, yet to be decided upon, all depending on what FarmGate Gardens has). We're now on the hunt for things to plant in this garden. We're Zone 5a/5b (American Zone 4) in the Belleville region of Ontario, Canada.

Suggestions on early, mid, and late flowering bulbs, periannuals, annuals, etc. please?

We already *want*

Giant Ornamental Onions
Lupins (already have quite a few of these in the garden, but I'd like to see if I can get giant ones)
Blue Iris
A variety of colours of Daffodils
Bleeding hearts


All 4 beds will be located on the east side of the front garden and will take up a considerable patch of grass in front of the porch. My other concern is that we have a VERY sizeable patch of peony growing in front of where the beds will be. I mean, this thing is enormous. One of the biggest areas of pale pink peonies I've ever seen in my life. I'm thinking we need to somehow work the peony display into the main garden by surrounding it with a raised bed frame, and planting around it.

I need ideas for flowers/colours that will compliment a pale pink (and HUGE) peony display, I'm also more than happy to re-home some peony to anyone in the GTA and surrounding areas if they'd like some.

 

[simple life]

I love those pictures, those gardens are so quaint.

Some of what I have in mine are here and I think they will work fine with pale pink peonies. Those gardens are usually a jumble of colors anyway. I like alot of purple in various shades in my gardens with a few bursts of other color here and there.
You just want to have different heights.

Bee Balm
lavendar
Hibiscus, (rose mallow)mine overwinter just fine here
Poppies
Hollyhocks
Salvia, there are several kinds and I have some that bloom from spring til fall.
lambs ear
coneflowers
delphineums
russian sage
foxglove
yarrow
monkshood
liatris
anemones
butterfly bush
sedum
agastache - anise hyssop and blue fortune are what I have but there are other varieties and colors.
Mine are purple and they get very full and tall, they also bloom a long time and the bees love them.

Good luck with the project and have fun!

 

[lupinfarm]

I love the butterfly bush, gorgeous colours! I have Lavender in the kitchen garden right now, but I could rehome some or buy a few more plants for the other side of the yard.

I love the idea of lots of purples, I've recently fallen in love with blue irises so I'm hoping we can grow some! We have a bunch of purple Columbine we need to rehome from the side of the goat shed. And lily of the valley.

I'm watching HGTV's Top 25 Gardening & Landscaping Mistakes, and they just told me at something like #12 not to jumble lots of colours. Sigghh, these landscapers don't understand the simple beauty of a hectic english cottage garden


There's actually a magazine called specifically "The English Garden" which I buy, and the May 2010 (yes already, somehow I think someone in the office overlooked this, the May issue out in March) issue has this *gorgeous* hectic and crazy english garden that is from a garden at a old mill in Surrey, England


Woops, here we are... I found it!


Lowder Mill, Surrey, England...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61798879@N00/3727731842/

We don't have a pond or anything, but I just love those Irises!

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi there Lupinfarm,

I think you should contact Reinbeau (& research her threads as last year she redid her front garden in a parterre style using herbs etc & has a wonderful flowering fruit tree there. She also has a wonderful formal vegetable garden in raised beds out the back of her house.

I am sure she has a stack of photos you could see if you ask nicely...........

She is so knowledgeable about what grows best where & who sells what plants & seeds, etc.

Your ideas sound wonderful -- lots of luck for them. :bee :bee :bee



:rose Hattie :rose

 

[lupinfarm]

I did see her photos when she was working on it and I liked it but its a tad too formal for our place. The land here itself is kind of crazy and reminds me of Cumbria. She's also in a different area to us so what may grow amazing where she is, isn't going to do so well here. I'm hoping to have a good mix of bulbs and periannuals, and enough of early, mid, and late flowering plants to create a very showy garden throughout the spring and summer.

I just can't wait for my favourite garden centre to open up!

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Lupinfarm,

I think you might find a lot of inspiration in this link:

http://www.katyelliott.com/blog/2009/05/english-cottage-garden-inspiration.html

If you follow through all the separate links within this one there are masses of English gardens with a great feeling of informality while still being organised.

Hope these might be more to your taste.....!!

Happy Springtime...!! :bee :happy_flower :bee


:rose Hattie :rose

 

[Hattie the Hen]

lupinfarms quote:

We need to do some landscaping of the front garden this year. Basically it's been just an empty patch with a picket fence, and a large limestone raised kitchen garden by the front door for the past year. It's north facing but gets quite a substantial amount of sun on a regular day due to us being on the top of a hill! Both my parents are English ex-pats (though, I suspect, my mum would like to be a current Pat back in England ) and I have very fond memories of playing in my Nan's garden in Essex which was done in a knot style, but less rigid and more organized chaos. Very traditional "English Cottage Garden" style.

We are *really* looking for organized chaos. The kind of garden you have to fight through and worry about being sucked up by a random plant, never to be seen again.


OK, organised chaos.......!?
Take a look at this video -- It might fit the bill:

http://www.videojug.com/film/an-introduction-to-cottage-gardens

:bee Hattie :bee

 

[patandchickens]

There are a bajillion books on the subject, lupinfarm. Check your library and ILL. What particularly comes first to mind is is one called something like "The english cottage garden in Canada" or some such thing, also the paperback "Perennials for Ontario" (or something like that) and "Lois Hole's Favorite Perennials". Another excellent book, for a climate fairly similar to ours, is "The well-tended perennial garden" by Tracy Sabato-Aust, which includes very very detailed planting/maintenance notes.

With that shallow soil on rock, remember you will have to water frequently and regularly throughout the growing season; make sure your well is going to be up to all these many water-consuming projects you've got going/planned

Some very easy, can't-kill-it-with-a-stick perennials for this climate that would do well in your style of garden, off the top of my head, would include:

daylilies of all sorts
coneflower (echinacea), various cultivars
perennial purple sage (I like "Blue Hill" but others are nice too,
there's also at least one white cultivar)
shasta daisy, although it is not long-lived
lamb's ears (stachys byzantina)
delphinium (I'd pick shorter ones e.g. Bellamosum for
a shallow-soil situation, not the traditional tall ones)
perennial geraniums of all types
globe thistle (Echinops)
bellflowers (campanula), particularly C. glomerata and
C. persicifolia (and if you want something REALLY
runnery and untidy and semi-wild, and profusely
flowering, try any of the C. punctata cultivars, or
come take them out of my garden, please) (note
that most other bellflowers are very high-
maintenance if you want prolonged flowering,
b/c you must deadhead individual flowers w/
a fingernail or snips)
Anthemis tinctoria (golden marguerite)
Fall-flowering asters (any A. novae-angliae or A. novo-belgii \
cultivars, or wild plants)
Centranthus ruber (warning, may self-seed a lot) (pink,
red or white)
Coreopsis grandiflora, which is a big nuisance to keep deadheaded
Lychnis coronaria
Lychnis, uh, the other common one, "Maltese Cross"
Gaillardia (may not be long-lived)
Helenium (may not be long-lived)
Any bearded irises (may be a maintenance headache once
leaf funguses and/or borers set in, plus need
frequent division)
Siberian irises IF you will keep the bed uniformly-watered
Physostegia (obedient plant) IF bed will stay fairly moist
Sedums, esp. Autumn Joy
Veronica (most spp and cultivars)
Pretty much any kind of hardy bulbs
Self-seeding annuals/biennials like johnny jump-ups or
forget-me-not

Honestly, just read a bunch of books on perennials and you will start to get a sense of what will work. I would suggest NOT trying to plant the whole thing ina finalized way in one year; rather, start some largeish drifts of a certain number of spp and then see how they do and how they look and when they bloom in relation to each other, then next year you will know what sizes/shapes/times/colors of plants you are looking for to fill in more, and the year after that you can fill in *more*, and so forth and so on. It is exceedingly difficult to DESIGN a natural-looking garden like that, they are better off "developing".

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Hattie the Hen]

More inspiration but no detail :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjBlfmB8Zyg&feature=related

This one is a true cottage garden, rather chaotic & packed full of details which are very personal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eMMkO3V4vQ&feature=related


:bee Hattie :bee

OK I'll shut up now.......... .........!!!!!

 

[lupinfarm]

Pat, we're planning on doing these in a deep raised bed. We do actually have quite deep soil in the front garden, our picket fence posts were able to go down to 4ft! And in the fields we can do as low as 3ft into the soil for fencelines. So we're not *too* bad. We call it "Rocky Rawdon" but its not the solid bedrock that is the issue, its the random large boulders.