Recently some friends of mine came back from England and raved about all the wonderful "cottage gardens" they had seen over there. They showed me pictures of prominent estate gardens, most owned and maintained by The National Trust. Hidcote Manor, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Nymans, Mottisfont Abbey Garden in Hampshire, and Gardens of The Rose. I tried to keep my mouth shut and enjoyed the fine garden pictures they had taken, but I could not help it, I had to ask: "Where is the cottage"?
"Cottage Garden" has become such an over exploited term among gardeners, that I have become tired of of the word "Cottage". All gardens these days seems to be "cottage gardens", according to the owners.
My parents had a very large "country garden". They had large perennial borders near the house. A very big vegetable garden and an orchard - with all the fruit in the world. I loved sitting in the tree house in a big apple tree, looking at the birds, sometimes just daydreaming and looking at the clouds on a warm summer day.
I often wonder how almost all gardens these days have become "cottage gardens" and why the term have become so popular that a growing number of garden magazines focus on this particular kind of gardens. I see rich people building miniature "cottages" on their property and create an informal garden with shrubs, fruit trees, roses, herbs, perennials and annuals. Nearly all my clients want a "cottage Garden" - maintenance free of course!
Some time ago I read a post on Zoë's blog Garden Hopping I simply love her blog and feast my eyes on her great pictures of great gardens! In her post about The Sissinghurst "Cottage Garden" she quoted Tony Lords sarcastic words about Sissinghursts Cottage Garden:
'This is as much a cottage garden as Marie-Antoinette was a Milk Maid'
Well I laughed so much at that! Because the words are so true! I think if I showed a picture of Sissinghursts Herb Garden to most people (gardeners or not) they would say it was a Cottage Garden. If I showed them a picture of Sissinghursts Rose Garden or White Garden they would also call them Cottage Gardens. How did it come to this? People seem not to be able to get enough of anything "Cottage" - there is even a Magazine Called CottageLiving! The other day I found a small sliver of wood in my cottage cheese. When I called the Dairy producer - the man on the other end of the line said "Well what did you expect at that price - the whole cottage"?
I think I know why cottage Gardens have become so popular that everybody who plants an herb and a annual in their back yard think they have made a "Cottage Garden" .
It is pure escapism! In this complex confusing world were children gun down their teacher and classmates, where everybody is suspected of being a terrorist in airports, an even organic grown produce has pesticide residues many long for something traditional and simple.
I also sometimes wish my life was less complicated than a cottage garden. Because the great estate gardens in England are not cottage gardens (sorry to break your illusions friends) And there is no such thing as a "no maintenance cottage garden".
I also long to be able to go back to that tree house in the orchard apple tree, looking at the garden. Because that country garden is no more. But we can not go back. No matter how many gold medals overhyped conceptual gardens get at famous garden shows, people still want cottage gardens and cottage living. Do you also have a cottage garden? Or do you have a real garden?
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15 comments:
Great post Niels, really enjoyed it, and am in complete agreement, the phrase is overused.
Cottage gardens belong to cottages, and go back countless centuries in the UK and Europe.
Spaces around cottages were used were the cottagers, usually men and women employed by the 'big house'on the land and as servants who had planted 'escapees' from the gardens of the estate. They raised vegetables, fruits and some animals; some chickens, a pig, maybe a cow to supplement their meagre rations.
In wasn't planned, or designed, it was charming because of its anarchy. Helen Allingham's famous paintings of such gardens and cottages never showed the hardship of the reality, just the romantic ideal. In a way part of the Arts and Craft movement, and it's preoccupation with venacular and times past.
I think a more accurate phrase to describe some of these gardens is, 'in the Cottage Garden style'.
You are right about it being a romantic view of the past, and a form of escapism. Any why not?
Blissfully, I live in a cottage from 1820ish, although, I wouldn't describe my garden as a cottage garden, it's got ideas above its station! LOL
Best wishes,
Zoë
Niels, I do agree with you. Living in an area of true cottages and having lived in several I get cross when a new house is called something or other Cottage, yet the building is far from my image of a cottage. The dictionary definition of a cottage is "a small simple house especially in the country". I think the word simple is important.
Cottage garden and cottage-garden style planting are two different things, for the former you need the 'cottage'. The term cottage-garden is really over used, usually to describe a garden which doesn't have any style at all but is admired.
Best wishes Sylvia (England)
Niels - I have a real cottage garden ;) No not really, but couldn't resist saying that!
I agree with Zoe - it's a 'style' of planting associated with our rather over-romanticism of the past. And something that the National Trust does in spade loads!
I volunteer at the National Trust Head Quarters in their gardens department. I had lunch with Tony Lord a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get introduced to him. I was hopping mad when I found out afterwards as there was so much I would have liked to talk to him about!
Zoe tells me you've had problems with content theft. I'm about to have a look through your blog to see if you have any advice on here about it. If not, I may contact you via Blotanical if that's OK?
How I wish I could live in a cottage like the one in your picture.... It's a romantic dream of mine - without much substance.
I do agree with you - calling Sissinghurst a cottage garden is not correct, however, I think the term is used nowadays to describe a non-formal garden - a garden with plenty of shrub roses and perennial.
/Katarina
Wonderful post Niels. I guess as a garden designer you hear that term more than some of us. It is an overused term. My garden is just my garden. I created it for me and there is no such thing as a no maintenance garden. Low maintenance is every laughable, because why have a garden if you don't want to do anything in it. My idea of a cottage garden is a cottage with the white picket fence etc...maybe that is just my own interpretation too. :)
I'm new to gardening, so I went to find a definition of cottage gardening. It's not OED-quality, but it was interesting:
"The Cottage garden is a distinct style of garden that uses an informal design, traditional materials, dense colorful plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants on a smaller scale than gardens typically associated with estates and public settings. Cottage gardens go back many centuries, but their popularity grew in 1870s England in response to the more structured English estate gardens that used formal designs and massed colours of brilliant annuals raised in greenhouses. They are more casual by design, depending on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure."
I can't say why the term has become popular in general, but what appeals to me, upon hearing it, is the informal, free form nature. Like wearing jeans and sweatshirt instead of a suit. There's something comfortable about "informal design" and "traditional materials" and "dense colorful plantings."
Whether you say, "That's a cottage garden," or "That's in the Cottage Garden style," I say live and let live. But I'm new... maybe I'll change my mind the more I learn.
Niels, I had to laugh at your posting because it made me think of the painter Thomas Kinkade and his idealized cottages and gardens. His paintings are so popular, I think, because of what you said, a fantasy of simpler times and ways.
But regardless of what the world is like, our own lives can be stripped of what is ugly or harsh and more like a beautiful garden, through God, of course.
Here is a link to a Thomas Kinkade painting but I don't know if it will come through or not - http://cgi.ebay.com/Thomas-Kinkade-1990-Rose-Arbor-Cottage-16x20-A-P-Canvas_W0QQitemZ300092158611QQihZ020QQcategoryZ551QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem?refid=store#ebayphotohosting
Dropping by to let you know that I mentioned your blog today on my blog, though it's hard to explain what the "mention" involves. The relevant post is this one.
Thank you for your interesting comments.
I felt I had to point out the overexploitation of the term Cottage Garden, because I see it all the time applied to gardens that I do not think are "cottage gardens". Very few seems to be able to distinguish and clarify what a cottage garden is anymore,and call every garden these days for a cottage garden. Take a look at this example:
http://www.haven.dk/sitehaven/currentedition.asp?x=&menu=.3.11948,11949,12257,12270&detail=12270
It is in danish - but says the garden portrayed is an English cottage garden. Since when did a garden with symmetry, topiary and lawns with clipped edges become a cottage garden?
Like Zoë and Sylvia point out - there is a history behind the term and nowadays it also often applied to a planting style.
Informality is one of the things that characterizes cottage gardens like Daisy and Katarina write. But it does not make all informal gardens "cottage Gardens".
So I had to write this little rant about all the cottage gardens out there that only exist in the owners fantasy, but has very little to do with reality.
I encourage people to find a garden style and stick to it, so their garden and house "work together". Garden fusion - with a little bit of everything rarely works and looks cluttered to me.
But gardeners should enjoy their gardens and plant whatever they like - I do not hope I take away anybody' s joy by my opinionated views of gardens and design. I have a plant collectors garden. I cram in as many roses I can. It is garden with lots of roses and many other plants, but it is not cottage garden. I hope you are working towards your goals with your gardens.
A garden is like a canvas. Nothing wrong with wanting to romance the garden like a Thomas Kinkaide painting.
I have to speak up here...
I live in a home that we have named "Rosehaven Cottage". Why? Because it is a small and simple vintage home much like the homes that my 3rd great-grandfather in Ireland lived in that he fondly wrote about as being the old cottage of his youth.
Our home can be called lots of different names--bungalow comes to mind. Here in the U.S. a "cottage" is something very different than a "cottage" in the U.K.
The term "cottage industry" also applies more liberally here in the U.S. than elsewhere. Since our home is the headquarters for our corporation Rosehaven Cottage Inc., it seems appropriate to use the term "cottage".
Now, do we have a "cottage garden" around Rosehaven Cottage? No. We have a mixture of a traditional garden, potager, English country garden (the term used here in the U.S.), and Mediterranean rock gardens. We have a white picket fence around the front garden that came with the home so the English country garden style is more fitting for that garden area. But it still very loosely applied.
So I hope that despite your dislike for the word "cottage" that you will still come and visit the "Rosehaven Cottage" blog--despite our "flawed" title. ;)
Cindy at Rosehaven Cottage
Cindy: I sure do want to visit your nice blog and read about your garden at Rosehaven Cottage. It is a very romantic name. I mainly object to the overexplotation of the term "cottage garden" since way too many over here do not recognize what this style of garden mean, but think every garden is a cottage garden. And it is a trend I see spreading to the US.
I just wanted to raise awareness about this problem and give my 2 cent, why I think this trend is spreading. Many people really want to live in a romantic fantasy world and I don´t blame them for that. I just want to encourage people to look at their gardens with other eyes and greater freedom than the term cottage garden allow. Maybe opting for another style of gardening would suit their house, yard and region better and make a more interesting garden?
Whew! I'm so glad you'll be coming back to Rosehaven Cottage--the cottage without cottage gardens. ;)
I completely agree that people should be more concerned about their climate and what works well. In my opinion, that should be the first consideration before deciding on a garden design.
By the way, here at our garden center they have a display showing maintenance levels on garden types and you'll be happy to know that they show the "country garden" as being the highest maintenance of all the garden design types.
Cindy at Rosehaven Cottage
Hello Niels,
Your post was both fun to read and thought-provoking...I have a subscription to Cottage Living Magazine, and have often wondered whether a house with 3500 Square feet, 3 and 1/2 bathrooms and a 3 car garage should be called a cottage.
My house fits the common definition of 'cottage' as a small one-story house, and although I don't have such traditional cottage elements as a picket fence, I do have a mix of trees, shrubs, roses, perennials, bulbs, annuals, tropical plants, herbs and vegetables. I like it, but I don't think of it as cottage garden.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Dear Niels,
If you could see the cancer of shopping malls and housing developments which has blighted the American landscape you would think differently about "cottage gardens". The "idea" that people can plant flowers and edibles, as well as a place to relax in the garden is still not what is happening in most of America. Rather than put down the concept of the cottage garden, this "cottage garden" concept must be celebrated and expanded.
The new cottage garden in the world of fast food and freeways shows our children a better way of living.
Philip
Sincerely,
*blush*
I have an actual cottage.. but am only just started to grow a proper rose garden..
the soil is thick humus almost clay, and I will have to use a lot of sand to get it right. I have planned the whole garden now, and I think in some years it will turn out great. Your garden is such an inspiration / thank you for sharing your photos and knowledge in such a beautiful blog!
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