The 18 Best Plants for Cottage Gardens

Bellflower

This tough perennial produces spikes of white or blue blooms in early and midsummer. Like most cottage garden plants, the flowers are great for cutting.

Name: Campanula percisifolia

Growing conditions: Full sun or part shade and well-drained soil

Height: To 3 feet tall

Zones: 3-8, depending on variety

Columbine

Easy to grow and beautiful, columbine blooms in spring and early summer. The colorful blooms are loved by hummingbirds and gardeners alike.

Name: Aquilegia varieties

Growing conditions: Part shade and well-drained soil

Height: To 3 feet tall

Zones: 3-9, depending on variety

Coralbells

In spring and early summer, coralbells produce sprays of pink, red, or white flowers. These flowers are a top choice of hummingbirds.

Name: Heuchera varieties

Growing conditions: Part shade and well-drained soil

Height: To 3 feet tall

Zones: 4-8

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The Elements of Cottage Garden Design - Part 3

 Choose Vintage Accessories
Accessorize your cottage garden with antique or vintage items. You're more likely to find garage-sale bargains than high-ticket purchases in a cottage garden. An old, dented watering can or a gate with peeling paint can work nicely.

Employ the Unexpected

Don't be afraid to find creative uses for old items. For example, an old chicken feeder might become a fun planter, or a rusty trowel could be a great gate handle.

Fit in a White-Picket Fence

Though not every cottage garden has a white-picket fence, the two do seem to go hand-in-hand. You don't have to use the fence to create a boundary. A short section simply could hold up favorite floppy perennials.

Do What You Love

While all these elements are commonly found in a cottage garden, the biggest rule is that you create a look you love. Don't get caught up in trying to follow "the rules." Plant what you like and how you like it for a delightful cottage garden to suit you.

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The Elements of Cottage Garden Design - Part 2

 Look for Soft, Romantic Plants

Most cottage gardens have a romantic feel. Part of that feel comes from the flowers. Look for blooms in soft pastel shades. Also look for plants packed with petals, such as peonies and old roses. As an added bonus, many of these varieties are also wonderfully fragrant.

Look for Materials with Character

Cottage gardens often include structures made from natural or well-worn materials. Weathered wood fences, arbors, and gates are right at home among a collection of cottage plants.

 Using Curving Pathways

Create soft meandering pathways instead of those that follow a straight, structured line. Many paving materials work in cottage gardens, including wood chips, stone, old bricks, and flagstone.

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The Elements of Cottage Garden Design

Create the romance of a cottage garden with these simple tips.

Go Informal

Cottage gardens don't look designed. In fact, they're usually exuberant, free-flowering, and sometimes even unrestrained. To get the informal look, avoid planting in straight lines or defined patterns. Let plants cascade over paths and weave through each other. It adds to their charm. And grow self-seeding plants that pop up in unexpected places.

Grow Old-Fashioned Flowers

Cottage gardens aren't about new varieties. They're usually filled with the same traditional favorites your grandmother would have grown. Some popular examples include peony, cosmos, foxglove, snapdragon, pansy, bachelor's button, columbine, bleeding heart, and hollyhock.

Select Homey Furniture

Make your cottage garden into an outdoor living space by adding comfy furniture. Avoid anything contemporary. Instead look for Adirondack, wicker, or painted metal shellback chairs. The furniture doesn't have to match: Part of the charm is how informal it is. An eclectic mix fits right in.

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Create an Easy-Care Shrub Garden - Part 3

Rozanne Perennial Geranium

'Rozanne' gives you big flower power: It starts blooming in June and the show of sky blue flowers continues nonstop all the way to frost. This perennial makes a bold statement as it weaves through the garden.

Name: Geranium 'Rozanne'

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide

Zones: 4-8

It's Also Perfect With: Spring-blooming bulbs; 'Rozanne' starts blooming as most bulbs start to fade.

Snowdrift Astilbe

Add texture to your shade garden with astilbe. This easy-care perennial produces feathery plumes of pink, red, or white flowers in early summer. The finely divided, ferny foliage looks great, too -- especially when you pair it with hostas and other big-leafed perennials.

Name: Astilbe 'Snowdrift'

Growing Conditions: Shade and moist soil

Size: To 2 feet tall and wide

Zones: 3-9

It's Also Perfect With: Old-fashioned bleeding heart; the astilbe blooms as the bleeding heart starts to fade so you don't have a bare spot in the garden.

Sky Wings Siberian Iris

Add a graceful element to your yard with Siberian iris. Though the blooms are smaller than their tall-bearded cousins, Siberian iris flowers are much more elegant. The plant's grassy foliage looks great, too. It adds an architectural element for the rest of the season.

Name: Iris sibirica 'Sky Wings'

Growing Conditions: Full sun or part shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide

Zones: 3-9

It's Also Perfect With: Peonies or baptisia for a wonderful contrast in bloom and foliage.

Tinkerbelle Lilac

Grow this great little lilac as a shrub or small tree! No matter how you train it, you'll love the spicy-scent of its bright pink flowers (which emerge from wine-red buds, creating a two-toned effect) in late spring. And best of all, you don't need to worry about it getting too big -- 'Tinkerbelle' only grows 5 feet tall.

Name: Syringa 'Tinkerbelle'

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 5 feet tall and wide

Zones: 3-7

It's Also Perfect With: Underplant it with peonies for a rich, romantic look in spring.

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Create an Easy-Care Shrub Garden - Part 2

Snowflake Oakleaf Hydrangea

Oakleaf hydrangea is a great season extender: In summer, we love its big clusters of white blooms. Then in fall, the leaves turn beautiful shades of burgundy red. The peeling, cinnamon-colored bark is great for winter interest, too. This selection is great for adding height, structure, and texture to shady gardens.

Name: Hydrangea quercifolia 'Snowflake'

Growing Conditions: Afternoon shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 7 feet tall and wide

Zones: 5-9

It's Also Perfect With: Clethra, a summer-blooming shrub with clusters of fragrant white or pink flowers. They're great for creating a wall of privacy in shady spots.

Prairie Sky Switchgrass

Switchgrass has it all: This tough plant tolerates heat, drought, and even a little shade. 'Prairie Sky' offers gorgeous metallic blue foliage that turns bright yellow in fall and looks good through winter.

Name: Panicum virgatum 'Prairie Sky'

Growing Conditions: Full sun or part shade and well-drained soil

Size: To 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide

Zones: 4-9

It's Also Perfect With: Evergreens such as dwarf hemlock or blue spruce for interest all year long.

Miniature Snowflake Mock Orange

One of spring's best scents, mock orange perfumes the air for weeks. This tough, compact selection offers double white flowers on a plant that fits perfectly just about anywhere.

Name: Philadelphus 'Miniature Snowflake'

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 2 feet tall and wide

Zones: 4-8

It's Also Perfect With: Easy-care shrub roses so you can extend the season of color and fragrance all the way to frost.

Little Mischief Shrub Rose

Grow low-care 'Little Mischief' for a burst of hot pink flowers all summer. It's heat and disease resistant, too, so you can enjoy it in any kind of weather.

Name: Rosa 'Little Mischief'

Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 2 feet tall and wide

Zones: 4-9

It's Also Perfect With: Purple coneflower, another tough plant that blooms much of the summer. The two combine beautifully in bouquets.

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Create an Easy-Care Shrub Garden

Combine these beautiful, easy-care plants for a gorgeous summer garden.

Endless Summer Hydrangea
You can't go wrong with 'Endless Summer'. This gorgeous hydrangea blooms all season -- even in the north. It's great for cutting, with 8-inch-wide flower clusters. The blooms range from pink in alkaline soils to blue in acidic soils. The selection is wonderfully disease resistant, too.

Name: Hydrangea 'Endless Summer'

Growing Conditions: Afternoon shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 5 feet tall and wide

Zones: 4-9

It's Also Perfect With: White impatiens for nonstop color to first fall frost.

Endless Summer Blushing Bride Hydrangea

Lighten shady spots with this beautiful shrub. 'Endless Summer Blushing Bride' bears clusters of gorgeous white flowers touched with light pink. Best of all, it reblooms all summer. And it resists unsightly diseases such as powdery mildew.

Name: Hydrangea 'Endless Summer Blushing Bride'

Growing Conditions: Afternoon shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 6 feet tall and wide

Zones: 5-9

It's Also Perfect With: Japanese painted fern for a terrific color combination.

Light-O-Day Hydrangea

Variegated foliage is a perfect way to add season-long interest. We love the crisp white edges around this shrub's foliage. Its early summer blooms -- clusters of pink or blue lacecap-type flowers -- are a nice accent to the leaves.

Name: Hydrangea 'Light-O-Day'

Growing Conditions: Afternoon shade and moist, well-drained soil

Size: To 5 feet tall and wide

Zones: 5-9

It's Also Perfect With: Fothergilla, a shade-loving shrub with springtime white flowers and blue-green foliage that turns festive shades of red and orange in fall.

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13 Great Red and Yellow Garden Combos - Part 4

 Stick with a Single Shade

Varying the shades of two single colors such as red and yellow -- from soft and buttery, for example, to bold and sunny -- is one way to offer variation in a garden, but grouping different flowers that bloom in the same hue also provides impact in a garden. Here, rich yellow lilies and zinnias flower in a similar deep shade of yellow, which pops against a rich red dahlia.

 Plant for Backyard Visitors

Bright red and yellow blooms also provide another garden benefit: The brilliant colors attract birds and butterflies. And, when the garden is composed of long-blooming native plants, such as coreopsis and blanket flower, the draw is even stronger for those natural inhabitants.

 Cluster Color in Containers

You grandmother relied on them, and for good reason: Zinnias are vigorous, long lasting, and beautiful. In container plantings, clusters of red and yellow flowers are hardworking overachievers, hiding the ordinary fence and lattice and providing a pretty backdrop to two outdoor chairs.

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13 Great Red and Yellow Garden Combos - Part 3

 Use Color to Make a Statement

As a front-yard focal point, a bold collection of yellow daylilies and red roses makes a grand first impression. The flower choices complement the other plants in the casually assembled bed around the house's address post and the bright colors deftly tie in to other hues in the landscape.

 Compare and Contrast

The varieties of flowers in the plant world come in to stark focus when two dissimilar blooms are paired. The frilly vertical spires of celosia -- here, in a nearly maroon red -- both contrasts and complements the delicate patterning on the butter yellow rose.

 Stay with the Tried-and-True

It's an oft-repeated spring pairing -- red, yellow, and red-and-yellow tulips -- but that's because it works. In part, it's because the vivid colors are such a welcome early-year boon to the gardener. It's also because the two colors together are naturally happy and lighthearted.

 Go Up, Go Down

Red and yellow flowers can certainly spread color joy horizontally along a long garden bed, but there are plenty of bright blooms that can go vertical, such as this lush climbing red rose. Another way to fill in with yellow and red flowers is to combine perennials -- the roses -- with annuals, such as pot marigolds and yellow snapdragons, both of which are great cutting flowers, too.

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13 Great Red and Yellow Garden Combos - Part 2

 Rely on Single Groupings

Plenty of flowerbeds randomly intersperse colors to create a pleasing mix. But staggering blooms in larger chunks can create a pretty rainbow effect that also works as a design strategy, even if the flowers are different varieties, such as the lilies and red pentas here.

 Be Fearless with Color Groups

Red and yellow plants tend to fall toward the hot end of the color wheel, which offers a great counterpoint to the plethora of pastel shades found in most gardens. Plus, when the types of flowers are the same -- here, cottage favorites yellow black-eyed Susan, dark red dahlia, and light purple foxglove -- the color composition not only works, but also provides a garden with varying levels of visual interest.

 Go for a Lighter Color

In the flower world, red and yellow are also prevalent in softer, nearly pastel shades. And when planted lushly, a single species, such as roses, compensates for those less intense hues by offering an overabundance of blooms that nicely fills out a large garden bed.

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13 Great Red and Yellow Garden Combos

Boost your garden's color quotient with cheerful combinations of these compatible hues.

Choose Color Masters
Coleus are the garden's color virtuoso: The visually interesting plants are accomplished at offering distinctive hues that rely less on blooms than they do on foliage. Here, one type of red-and-yellow coleus bridges the color gap between a brilliant red coleus and bright yellow stonecrop.

Select Double-Duty Plants

Multitasking -- that ever-popular buzzword -- describes the distinctive spires of torch lily. That's because the plant does more than offer vertical growth: Its blooms bear the happy pair of red and yellow on a single plant. Use plants like this as specimens by themselves in the garden or to tie together several single-color plants.

 Pick Similarly Styled Plants

Red and yellow aren't difficult-to-find colors in the plant world, but that doesn't mean that your flower choices need be boring. In fact, similarly structured plants can supply vastly different bloom patterns, making the traditional appeal of red and yellow even more charming. Here, coreopsis, ox eye, falling stars, and daylilies all offer bright blooms and interesting foliage in this old-fashioned flowerbed.

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Beautiful Green and White Plant Combinations - Part 3

 Let the Flowers Grow

A casual combination of cottage-style flowers allows foliage and delicate blooms -- including white salvia, foxglove, cosmos, and green flowering kale -- to take center stage. A small rust metal trellis adds height and structure to the low-growing, mostly horizontal vegetation.

 Get Your Foliage Fix

One of the best ways to boost the soothing garden combo of green and white is to rely on foliage. It often offers as much visual variety with speckles, spots, and stripes as flowers do. And a carefully curated collection also provides texture through different kinds of leaves. Here, a white rain lily supplies a subtle bloom, while a polka-dot plant and fern spice up the plant mix.

 Embrace the Identical

To make a big impact with restrained color combinations such as green and white, plant big swaths of the same plant, such as in this urban rooftop garden. In place of perennials, lushly blooming petunias and vividly variegated caladiums supply a distinctive natural border to a fountain.

 Create Constant Color

When it comes to merging green and white in the garden, hostas are a natural pick. Here, an emerald tone dominates the foliage, but the color setup gets flopped in a foreground draped with 'White Nancy' dead nettle.

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