Can a 'cottage garden' look good in winter?

[TranquilityofSolitude]

We have a border about 1.5m wide which runs around the two 'outside' walls of our house - effectively our front garden. One wall faces south and the other west, but the south-facing side does not get full sun because there are a lot of trees around us.

Our house is a barn conversion and would suit cottage garden type planting, but this border needs to look good all year. What could I include to make it look reasonable in autumn/winter? Any advice gratefully received :)

Maintaining year-long interest is probably one of the hardest things to do in gardening.

I'll come back in a few days with some ideas.

Am interested in your response too, Ferguson.
Thanks

Thanks Ferguson. Any advice much appreciated!

We have a cottage garden. I use box bushes, trimmed to shape, as structure during the winter months. Between November and February, that's about all we have.
We do have heaps of snowdrops, daffodils and a couple of camellias to herald the spring, and from mid May to August, the beds look fab.

Our front garden is all entirely flower beds with no lawn and we have the following plants that keep their leaves in winter:

• a couple of holly bushes (not the kind with berries though!)
• Camellia
• some rose bushes which seem to keep leaves most of the year (we even had roses out in the snow!)
• hydrangea which if you leave the dried flower heads on can look quite attractive
• primroses and primulas seem to flower all year round
• saxifrage which is spreading really nicely and making good ground cover.

Not so good - fuchsia which loses all its leaves and looks like a load of dead twigs until the leaves come back. Also I have a load of calla lily type things which die back and leave a load of mushy leaves turning brown all winter, very ugly (inherited from previous owners, I'd like to rip them all out).

I'm a complete novice, and sort of in the same boat. I have a similar sized-raised bed to fill, although it doesn't need to be cottage-style, but I do want some summer interest rather than just evergreen shrubs. Am currently planning a mixed border. 1.5m isn't very deep, so am only planning on a couple of tall shrubs, then I'll use climbers and bamboo to cover the rest of the fence. That leaves room in front for a few small shrubs and perennials. I found this article quite interesting:

www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/9444552/Mary-Keens-fail-safe-summer-borders.html

Autumn: asters, japanese anemones, heleniums, grasses, eupatropium, sanguisorba, nerines, cylamen, autumn flowering crocuses, camellia sasanqua, hydrangeas. Trees: cherry trees, fruit trees for fruit, figs, autumn fruiting raspberries. Acers for autumn colour and a Japanese feel but they dont do much the rest of the year.If you have trees with edible fruit you get spring blossom and Autumn fruit and often Autumn colour as well. I would only get an edible cherry tree for instance.

Winter: cornus, garrya elliptica, mahonia, chrysanthia edgeworthia, winter flowering honeysuckle, clematis jingle bells, clematis wisley cream, snowdrops, hellebores (lenten rose), grasses.

Evergreens are useful eg ferns, yew, box etc
Topiary is nice.
Espaliered fruit trees look good in winter

Thank you :)

We have a pyracantha with orange berries which is very cheery, a wild dog rose that I have kept mainly for the red hips through winter, a yellow-leaved evergreen (sorry no idea of species) and a winter-flowering evergreen clematis that I have mixed feelings about but that is probably just because I tried to fit it in too small a space and it's squashing other things.

Oh and what about something with scented flowers? www.rhs.org.uk/plants/articles/misc/winter-flowering-shrubs-for-fragrance

Thanks. Lots of good ideas. We need to pull out quite a few things which have become overgrown or aren't thriving so it would be good to find a few replacements which would take us in the right direction.

Heuchera keep their colourful leaves all year round.

I started a thread about a cottage garden style border in chat earlier today. We are in the same boat. I love them during summer but wasn't sure about it during winter. This is our 3rd year of building it up. We planted 5 box balls at very regular spacing along the length of the bed, they get swallowed in high summer but look great during winter. We then planted 4 young trees in between the box bushes - japanese cherry, can't rem the rest. Bought the trees and box in aldi about 3 years ago. They look good in winter and add height too. Then we also have a bay which is really thriving and a rock rose.

We have a wonderul hellebores which started flowering in Jan/ feb and is still in full bloom - would love another few of them. Lots of spring bulbs - snowdrops, hyacinths, muscari, tulips etc all in bloom now.

Things that look good in my garden in winter include:

Cornus
Fatsia japonica
Holly
Box
Eucalyptus (but that's a huge tree so may not be suitable for your space)
Ferns

I had lots of ivy, which looked fantastic and added 'green' interest, but I've recently removed it all as it was causing too much damage to brickwork.

Lots of snowdrops, winter irises (although they're only in flower for a few days), cyclamen naturalised under trees, primrose (which self seed prolifically), daffodils, bluebells (but they last few are more spring than winter interest), hellebores.

Agree re:espaliered apple tress. They actually look more interesting in winter than summer IMHO.

Oh yes fatsia japonica, great plant. If wet soil then Gunnera though it dies down in winter

There is a whole 'leave the seed heads on' genre of plants which are therefore supposed to have winter interest. eg hydrangea, phlomis. If your garden is relatively dry and gets some sun this works. If dark and damp it doesnt and fiery cornus is much better.

Viburnum Bodnantense is another good one. Small pink flowers in winter (Dec iirc in my garden). Not terribly interesting the rest of the year though.

I'd say you need some permanent structure with some evergreens- either shrubs or small plants like hebes.

The you can add colour in between.

Late winter is about the only time when there is very little out- but after that you can have snowdrops and all the spring bulbs.

I like cottage garden perennials but I also like the structure of some evergreens- like some big box balls or a row of lavender.

I think you need to plan the structure first and think about shapes, rather than focusing too much initially on colour and season of plants.

1.5 mtrs is not very side. They say to get a lovely 'typical' cottage garden effect you need 12 feet!

So with a border of around 4.5 feet you won't want any huge trees or shrubs but too many small specimens looks fussy and makes a space smaller. Don't forget the verticals- you can plant the walls with rose, honeysuckle, clematis, ivy etc.

Thank you for all your advice. Today we pulled out some more of the old stuff and prepared the ground a bit more thoroughly. I found some hebes and clematis so we planted those. I have made a list of all your suggestions and will start searching. I think the ideas to make the most of the walls are helpful - they will provide a backdrop and there's a lot of wall to cover. They're also quite warm so we should be able to grow things on them quite well.

Don't plant ivy. It will destroy your walls! We've just spent several weekends in a row removing ivy from our garden walls (6 trips to the dump with a big car filled with sacks of the stuff).

Thanks, Sprung - I won't! I was thinking of the apple trees suggested earlier. We had a lot in our last house and it was absolutely full of spiders and earwigs!

The problem comes from planting too many of the perennials which die back completely over winter, leaving you with big patches of bare earth!

Try mixing in some evergreen plants. These don't have to be conifers: you can get some lovely cottagey ones. Things like choisya ternata keeps its leaves and has beautiful scented blossom in spring. Christmas box (sarococca confusa) looks a bit raggedy, but smells divine - if you have an area where you can put a mini divider of it in, it will reward you with its fragrance in December and January. A variegated holly, one of the less municipal mahonias (take a look at 'soft caress'), one of the less municipal elaeagnus (Goldrim?), viburnum tinus 'Eve Price', an elegant bamboo (Phyllostachus, fargesia), and dozens of hellebores will give you a garden that has more interest than you can shake a stick at over the winter.

There are some great suggestions on here. We have box balls and hellebores and they look great in winter

The grasses culture takes a bit of getting used to for me. In theory the tall grasses wave in the wind and reflect the golden autumn sunshine. In practice grass borders are better for larger gardens because to be effective you need repetition and careful companion planting with salvia, sanguisorba, heleniums etc. That said, on a recent Gardeners World programme Joe Swift showed a small garden with a border which had grasses in for winter interest.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02lf3b8

try Christmas Box (sarcococca) as it is ever green and has beautifully scented white flowers on it from December onwards. Hydrangeas a good idea. Also don't clear up all the seed heads and left over plant stalks from summer/autumn as when there is a crisp frost in the air. Can't help that it may look shabby the rest of the time!

Depending on your taste, some perennials look good if they are left over the winter to give interest then cut back in the spring.

These would include sedum, verbena boriensus, (sp)- the tall one, as well as shrubs with interesting bark such as the dogwoods.