When designing a cottage garden, judicious choice of plants can give you an almost year-round display without visible gaps or unsightly dead foliage. below are a few selections of plants that when combined together in the cottage garden can provide blooms almost year round.
Late Winter & Early Spring Color: For late Winter and early Spring color in the garden there are many choices: Loropetalums, Tulip Tree (Japanese magnolia), Yellow Bells (forsythia), Carolina Jasmine, Camellia japonicas, flowering quince, Winter Daphne, Old Fashioned Bleeding Hearts, helleborus (Lenton Rose) and flowering cherry trees. Popular and readily available bulbs include crocus, daffodils and hyacinths. Plant bulbs by scattering them in irregular patterns throughout the garden. No straight rows or formal patterns please.
Spring: Irises, Clematis, Gerber daisies, dianthus (Cottage Pinks), Peonies, Snapdragons, foxgloves, columbines, honeysuckles, wisterias, Confederate jasmine, along with scads more will color up the garden in Spring.
Summer: Sun-loving perennials, such as Shasta daisy, Rudbeckia daisies (Black-eyed Susan), Blazing Star (liatris), Pincushion Flower, Hollyhocks, daylilies, coreopsis and all the varuious coneflowers are wonderful for summer color. Crape Myrtles, particularly the mildew resistant Fauriei Hybrids will provide 80 to 100 days of outstanding flower power in the garden. Dwarf selections of crape myrtle, such as the Dazzle Series fit in nicely in the middle or front of the border. Dwarf spireas and abelias provide not only outstanding foliage colors, but summer-long flowers as well. Lantanas can't be beat for drawing in the butterflies from May to frost! Butterfly Bush come in a close 2nd. Don't forget about fruit. Fruit trees, bushes and vines can provide a bounty of fresh fruit during Summer.
Fall & Early Winter Color: Extend the color show into fall with flowering perennials such as chrysanthemums, asters, and Toad Lilies. Shade-loving perennials such as the hardy ferns, columbines, heucheras, and hosta lilies are perfect lighting up those shady spots in the garden.Camellia sasanquas, whether grown as a tree, large shrub or espalier, will produces hundreds of pretty flowers throughout the Fall season.Many trees, such as red maples and the gingkom tree can provide brilliant foliage color in the garden.
Roses: But the reigning cottage garden plant has to be the rose. Look for the hardier climbing and shrub roses instead of hybrid tea roses. A new series of roses are the Knock Out shrub roses. Not only will their season-long profusion of blooms "knock you out", their resistance to disease will keep you going back to the nursery to get more. This is a rose anybody can grow. Knock Out Roses are now available in a range of colors including cherry red, pink, light blush pink, yellow and a multicolor one called 'Rainbow' - all of which fit perfectly in the cottage garden.
You can buy perennial plants for Cottage Gardens online at GardenerDirect.com
