Use informal designs, dense plantings to create a haven in your home. PHOTO | FILE
What better place could there possibly be for a lantern-lit dinner or reading area than near a vast medieval cottage garden with a beautiful array of flowers, antique items, ornamental and edible plants.
By now, you might be thinking that you have seen basically all landscaping ideas to implement in your garden whether in your urban home or your perfect getaway out of the city.
However, among the numerous gardening ideas — there is the less talked about —the cottage garden.
A cottage garden has an English history when women propagated any fruit, vegetable and medicinal herbs in front or back yards. But it has evolved into displays of beauty.
One rule of having one is that it should be informal and not defined. The moment you define how things are arranged and planted, it ceases becoming a cottage garden.
Perfect hideaway
Instead, it should have dense planting bursting at the seams with colour and flowers that would create a country-like rustic feel. Plants must be planted around a cottage for originality.
This could be your house or a house-like structure in your garden.
With a good hammock affixed on a strong tree or balcony, vintage dining table, a cottage garden can be the picture-perfect hideaway for lantern-lit dinners, bush breakfast, outdoor meditation and for those with a consuming appetite for books, this is just the place.
So how does one pull off a covetable cottage garden?
“How you want to use it is what dictates how the cottage garden will appear,” says Pius Mwambingu, a landscape architect at Landtek Studios, an urban design consultancy in Nairobi.
Mr Mwambingu said that a cottage garden is achievable anywhere so long as one has a desire for plants and a readiness to mix them all up.
Space should be a non-issue. You can have a sloppily-designed flower beds for the inviting front area that then runs to the backyard for entertaining your family and friends.
The difference with this kind of garden is that it will involve you a lot more than any other person since it is more of a personal space.
“A cottage garden should connect more to you than any other person. It should be intimate,” Mr Mwambingu says.
Design materials
To achieve an informal natural design, use wooden material to create a structure in your garden that would have a natural feel.
The wood must be pressure-fitted to withstand adverse weather and protection from termites, said Mr Mwambingu. Naturally, curved bricks and not machine-cut, can be used for the walls.
Choose clay pots over concrete as the latter are less flexible and designs cannot be tweaked. Plastic containers and metals can also be used, but this should not be your first choice.
“You can use any material to create a cottage garden, but pay attention to the finishes as it is what brings the rustic traditional feel. I recommend clay material for clay pots,” says Mr Mwambingu.
Wood or metal can be used to create picket fences and curve pathways to the backyard. Instead of making pathways to follow a straight-line, use old bricks, stones, wood chips to create soft meanders.
Ornaments and furniture
Cottage gardens range from perfectly-crafted statues, arbour and pergola structures, antique benches, wooden furniture and carvings, iron art.
They are typically packed with similar old-style preferences your grandmother would love.
Select laid-back furniture that would otherwise offer visitors tempting seating and indulgence in your intimate space. Avoid anything modern.
Instead, leverage on wood and mental for settees and tables—they do not have to match.
Oscar Njuguna, a creative flower decorator and landscaper, said that these antiques can be found in garage sales or from your home garage.
“When it comes to cottage gardening, employ the unexpected… it could be your rusty bicycle that lost function and you place it in a way that it acts as a flower stand and everyone would be asking where you got it from,” says Mr Njuguna.
An old chicken feeder would work well for a hanging flower pot, for instance. At the end of the day, create something that you love and do not follow “rules,” he said.
Plants
No cottage garden would be complete without soft romantic flowers like roses and their scent. Choose the roses in terms of height, colour and their habit.
White roses are a good bet since they are also climbers.
While scouting for your favourable flowers to plant in the garden, mix ornamental, edible plants and fruits trees.
Traditionally, cottage gardens were functional in most Kenyan homes. One would have beehives, vegetables, herbs, even livestock under zero-grazing. The use and need is what is changing with more home-owners now preferring aesthetic and well-manicured swards.
“Cottage gardening has been there since the colonial times but it is only that most people even if they have it in their compound, do not know that it actually is one,” says Mr Mwambingu.
Go for ornamental grasses like the fountain grass to break the normal. For ground cover, the colourful gazanias would do. To add some pomp, consider the daisies.
Have the hedge plants and climbers like flourishing grapevines that can scramble up the wall or up verandah posts. Every idle space should be covered up for a perfect cottage garden. But don’t let your cottage garden cease to be one and turn into a mess.
Clay pots come in handy for planting herbs that would be placed on the kitchen windowpane for easy use while cooking.
Perfect kitchen herbs include rosemary lavender, parsley and basil.
For fruit trees, go for those that do not grow tall that would end up taking up a lot of space in your garden. Dwarf fruit tree species would do.
“Try guavas, orange trees, pawpaw, apples – the latter would require cooler environments like of central Kenya,” says Mr Mwambingu, adding that invasive plants must be avoided at all costs.
Costs
Mr Mwambingu says that costs of setting up a cottage garden would vary depending on the size and type of material used.
A five by five meters garden would cost Sh10,000 for the layout and Sh250,000 for setting up the details.
If you are adding permanent structures, the cost would be higher.
“The costs vary from Sh10,000 to Sh40,000 for the design layout and the total amount could go beyond Sh1 million depending on what exactly a client wants in their cottage garden,” says Mr Mwambingu.
