Create a cottage garden this year with Must Have Perennials®
Plant These Must Have Perennials® and transform your garden into a lovely cottage garden
Many gardeners just want to achieve that English Garden look with blue and purple ground covers, windswept flowers and cascading plants over rocks and stone walls. Perennial plants and flowers are a great investment because you can plant them once and enjoy them as part of your landscape
for years to come. Why not create a perennial garden that showcases these cottage garden plants?
Geranium Hardy Geraniums are great performers and help create a desirable English garden. Create beautiful borders, and ground covers with varieties like Geranium Rozanne®, Azure Rush®, and ‘Eureka Blue’.
For inspiration we look to Adrian Bloom, who creates “Rivers” of Rozanne® for Bressingham Gardens®. The rivers are designed to flow through a garden attracting pollinators with fragrant foliage, and cool colors that thrive in the summer heat.
Geranium Black n’ White is a delicate pure white flower that stands out against dark foliage that can appear deep green, purple, or nearly black.
With silver veined flowers, ‘Black n’ White’ is lovely for front borders, cottage gardens, woodlands, and can also be grown in tubs with care. The foliage is fragrant and will attract bees.
Bring in the pinks with Geranium ‘Blushing Turtle’, ‘Hexham Velvet’, and Rothbury Gem (‘Gerfos’)
There are cottage garden flowers like Echinacea ‘Lovely Lolly’, Heuchera Summer Haze in White, Light Pink, or Dark Pink, or Heuchera ‘Steel City’.
Looking to add some beauty and charm to your garden?
Anemone plants are also called windflowers because of the way the blooms appear to be opened by the wind.
The Anemone are known as versatile for front borders and containers too! Butterflies and bees love these pretty ladies, and they are deer-resistant. Thriving in USDA Hardiness Zones 5, this plant blooms in autumn with an upright habit. Make sure to plant anemone in full sun or part shade for optimal growth.
Anemone ‘Pretty Lady Emily’
Anemone ‘Pretty Lady Diana’
Anemone ‘Pretty Lady Susan’
Anemone ‘Pretty Lady Julia’
Anemone ‘Pretty Lady Maria’
The Pretty Lady Anemone series are all sun-loving flowers with 2 inch (5cm) blooms with either single or double flowers formed in autumn. The are very floriferous! Habits are compact, unlike other hupehensis selections.
The Campanula poscharskyana Blue Waterfall (‘Camgood’) has a low-growing, spreading, and trailing habit. Blue Waterfall flowers in the summer and autumn. It makes a lovely front border, ground cover, rock garden or container plant. These cascading blooms are long-blooming, and also drought tolerant.
Heuchera Summer Haze
This beautiful plant is a must-have in any garden. Heuchera, also called coral bells, is grown more for its gorgeous, frilly foliage that comes in shades ranging from deep burgundy to deep forest green. The flower wands appear in mid-summer in white and pink colors. It’s also not particularly tasty to deer or bunnies and tolerates both sun and shade.
Eryngium zabellii ‘Big Blue’ is an attention grabber at first glance with striking out of this world-blue color. This versatile plant is perfect for use in middle borders, as cut flowers, or as a specimen for dried arrangements.
This perennial is a favorite in the garden because of it’s unique color and it is attractive to bees and butterflies.
The Rockies Helleborus
These stunning shade lovers appear in late winter or early spring (around the time of Lent) when snow still is on the ground. They have unique foliage that will extend interest to shade gardens well into the summer.
The Rockies Helleborus Series has the most interesting traits with foliage that is freckled, red, marbled, and toothy. Cottage gardens can include hellebore plants that add a clever touch.
‘Snowshoe Mountain’
New foliage emerges rose-tinged in the fall and early spring maturing to white and green speckled leaves. Bouquets of flowers emerge in early Spring along with a new flush of foliage. Rose blushed buds and flowers striped with green persist for weeks slowly fading to green. Uniquely colored and patterned foliage reminiscent of a snow storm adds extended interest to shade gardens into the summer.
‘Mt. Nebo’
New foliage emerges bright red in the fall and early spring maturing to pink, white and green speckled leaves. Bouquets of flowers emerge in early Spring along with a new flush of foliage. Rosy pink blushed buds and flowers persist for weeks slowly fading to chartreuse. Bright yellow reflexive anthers add to the unique flowers.
‘Pike’s Peak’
Silver-grey leaves with finely toothed margins emerge in spring along with bouquets of chartreuse flowers. Foliage is accented with attractive venation and a silver overlay.
‘Hollowtop Mountain’
In fall and early spring green foliage emerges with bright white mid veins and marbling. Flowers are singular and clear white early in the spring. As leaves mature they hold attractive marbling and develop bright red petioles.
Transform your garden space and include other elements that will help complete the design. Step into the enchanting world of a typical English garden, where stone or brick pathways wind through lush greenery and vibrant flowers. From towering trees, shrubs to colorful perennials, every corner offers a new delight for the senses. Take a moment to relax on a charming bench and soak in the beauty around you. Who knows, you might just discover your inner artist through endless photo opportunities!