Cottage Garden

The cottage garden is a style of garden that evokes many various images, from the quaint garden around thatched cottages of Tudor England, to the passalong gardens of rural tenement houses in the Deep South. So often the cottage garden tends to be glorified, as if it stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale or a Thomas Kinkade painting. In reality, along with being beautiful, it is a highly useful style of garden. It can be, and has been, adapted to fit our modern life styles and its appeal is truly global.

To begin to understand the concept of the cottage garden it is best to start with a definition of what the term literally means. A "cottage" is defined as a "small, humble dwelling." A "garden" is defined as "a place for the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, or small plants." Therefore, by strict definition, a "cottage garden" is "a place for the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, or small plants at or around a small, humble dwelling."

This definition is in some ways broad, in that it would include all gardens around all small, humble dwellings, whether they be a few flowers beds around the old oak tree, a rectangular vegetable bed in the back, or an elaborate system of parterres. Do these evoke the image of a cottage garden that you had in mind? They don't for me.

On the other hand, this definition may seem a bit restrictive to some. I have seen many gardens that are described as being cottage gardens, yet there is no cottage anywhere near, or the dwelling is definitely neither small nor humble. I personally would say that these are not then truly cottage gardens and back my opinion with the argument that one can not have a rose garden without roses or a shade garden without shade. Therefore, not having a cottage means that one can't have a true cottage garden. Perhaps these "cottage-less" cottage gardens may more appropriately be described as "cottage-style gardens", "cottage garden styled" or simply "cottagesque".