I have long had A Love Of English Gardens. The pretty flower beds, lush lawns, lovely seating areas as well as quaint little paths and arbors make my heart beat faster.
This post will cover ideas for:
- Beautiful Blooms
- The Perfect Layout
- Hearty Hedges
- Pretty Paths
- Sweet Seats
A Love Of English Gardens
Most English gardens have a relaxed look which is perfect for those that don’t want to spend all of their summer days weeding and trimming. While such gardens may look like an afterthought the effect does actually require some planning and patience.
Beautiful Blooms
You can use old English floral favorites such as heirloom roses, hardy geraniums, sweetly scented peonies and cone-shaped foxgloves. A mix of bulbs, happy perennials, and flowering shrubs add color throughout all of the growing seasons. Annuals such as aquilegia, delphinium, lavender, phlox, and pinks bring happy returns year after year.
The Layout
English gardens often feature a layout in which the tallest plants are placed in the back with the shortest in the front. You can start with hollyhocks planted against the cottage wall as they are generally the tallest growing flower. Historically English houses had to contend with damp ground. The hollyhock plant helped to draw moisture out of the wall which kept the foundations dry.
Climbing plants such as wisteria, clematis, certain roses, morning glories, and others can be trained to grow over pergolas, metal obelisks, or wooden columns.
This technique, along with the use of urns, statues or birdbaths offer a solution to provide height in the background and center of lush beds.
Over The Hedge
This lovely sunken garden in Surrey features a formal topiary parterre. Old growth hedges can be trimmed into almost any shape with the right tools and plenty of patience.
The garden of Sarah Fraser has a central flower bed surrounded by lawn. Ms. Fraser has painstakingly planted over 2,000 bulbs by hand in addition to shaping an ancient holly bush into whimsical bowler hat.
The Right Path
Adding various paths throughout the garden not only assists you in caring for the garden but also adds in another layer of texture and visual delight.
You can use brick, flagstone, gravel, stones or wood chips to create walkways and paths. The design is generally curvy. This gives the impression that there is a delightful secret waiting around the next bend.
Low growing plants, such as lady’s mantle, alyssum, and daisy fleabane can be placed along the edges to soften the look.
A Sweet Seat
This peaceful garden features a manicured lawn that overlooks a salt marsh in Kent. A metal bench, with softly sinuous lines, repeats the meandering curves of the flower bed. It truly incorporates itself as a beautiful accent piece.
I hope that I have provided a few tools and inspiring ideas so that you can create your own English garden.
Now I’ll leave you with a smile in regards to a correct gardening term. My brilliant British friend Louise recently shared “Yards are for prisons and gardens are for the home.”
Happy Gardening!
Laura
Your inspiration photos are so beautiful! I love gardens that are a mix of formal lines with cottagey mixes of flowers. One of these days I must get to England to see this in person!
So glad you are sharing at the garden party. 🙂
Laura, I too love the English gardens! A picture of a hedge in a magazine is what inspired me to plant some boxwood along part of my rock wall. I love how it softened it. We have it all along our back. Although, it’s pretty it can be quite stark. Love that fun saying about the garden and a yard! Certainly runs true with me. Thanks for sharing these beautiful ideas with the Garden Party.
hugs,
Jann
Oh my, Laura….I want to see those pretty English gardens in person one day, but for now, I loved seeing them through your photos. Thank you for sharing all the beauty with us. That quote from your friend made me smile!
Oh My Golly, the holly hat! It’s fantastic. Loved everything about this post. Makes me dream.
I do love English gardens. Mine is not quite there, but I have many of the same plants, as our climate is very similar to that of England’s. I’ve caught myself using “garden” more than “yard” lately since reading so much English literature and visiting English blogs. Have a good weekend, Laura.
I always thought (ignorant gardener that I am) that an English garden would be easier because it looks like things just grow and happen — all those glorious pops of color and all mixed up and lovely. Silly me. I learned a long while ago that that wild English garden is carefully cultivated, designed, planted and weeded as much, if not more, that less explosive traditional ones!
I love them. Love them to pieces. Know I can’t maintain one but oh, how I love them!
English gardens are very appealing, even tho they are not maintenance free. But then again, is any gardening maintenance free? We could only hope!
It’s been a joy to look at these photos and get inspiration from English gardens! Very beautiful!
i so appreciate the timely post because it makes me think I might be able to do something similar for my own cottage. Foliage is also a good way to cover architectural flaws or just a well worn house.
Haha Laura! I love being brilliant. Thank you!
Laura, your post is full of beauty and inspiration. I adore English gardens, and would love to have one. Alas, the central Texas heat isn’t exactly condusive to these pretty gardens. One must compromise I suspect, but for me I’ve found that I’ve not ever been successful. I have a neighbor who has a small English garden that I enjoy as I take my daily walk. She has the perfect sun exposure!
LOL no yards around here, then….only gardens and lawns! ;P Don’t you just love the tall hollyhocks? We actually grew them when we lived in Nashville, but I don’t think they could survive Central Alabama. What a beautiful post, my Sweet Friend!
Wow Laura, so many beautiful gardens. The inspiration garden photos take your breath away. I could sit in any of these. Magical places and be content. Thanks for sharing such lovely gardens.
they are the best aren’t they?
I go annually for an extended period & have made many friends over the years. when I was telling my friend Angela about my yard, I eventually stopped noticing a look of horror. eventually we corrected the term, learning I was describing my prison!
debra
Just absolutely stunning! Makes me want to completely redesign my yard.
Laura: You truly captured the framework of English gardens beautifully in this post. Gorgeous gardens and wonderful inspiration!
I love them all! While our New Old Cottage came with a lovely 30′ English Laurel hedge that gives us lovely privacy, there was little else for us to work with apart from an awful lawn. Last fall we laid out the front garden and I am happy with how it is coming along. This spring we have been working on the back garden…..and I had to smile when I came in from digging a new rose bed (the second triangular bed) to see the title of your post. It is a lot of work to achieve the unstudied look for an English cottage garden, but once it is established I have hope that it will be just-enough work….and a lot of pleasure!
Laura, thanks for the tour. I, too, have a lifetime love of English gardens. I love the “relaxed look” you mentioned. You’ve inspired me to put a trip to the garden center on my to-do list this month.
Such lush and lovely gardens! I love them all. My favorite flowers are roses and I like when they are climbers that drape over arbors and doorways.
I so enjoyed seeing all these gorgeous gardens. How I wish we could have even a tiny piece in our garden looks like this, but staying on the highveld in South Africa makes that almost impossible. Well maybe that’s not strictly true, there’s a lady down the road from us who has a beautiful English garden but I do know she pays quite a bit extra for water every month so she can keep them looking beautiful.
Dreamy English gardens…sighs…I am featuring you today at TFT! Beautiful post!
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