Gardening has been my favorite hobby for as long as I can remember. When I was 10 years-old, I convinced my parents to let me have my own garden along the west side of their house.
First, I had to prove myself by taking care of all of my Mom’s other gardens for a Summer. I was thrilled with the responsibility, because to me, picking weeds and dead-heading perennials is still one of the most relaxing things in the world. Eventually, they realized my desire for a garden wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment idea, but a deeply rooted desire of a passionate outdoors-man (I mean, girl).
I got my own garden on the condition that I had to do all the work myself and buy my own plants. I was thrilled! I overturned the lawn, tilled it under, added topsoil, compost and mulch, and used all my birthday money to buy a mixture of annuals and perennials. I bordered the edge with rocks I collected from the creek in the valley and made a toad house from terracotta pots.
That garden is one of my favorite childhood memories, and one of the reasons I’m thankful for homeschooling. I want to afford my children the same opportunity to pursue their personal interests, whether that be woodworking, small engine repair, painting, or what have you.
Years later, I spent a couple Summers working for a landscaper – by far my favorite job as a teenager! I would have done the work for free, I loved it so much. Warm sunshine, fresh air, birds chirping, and all the beauty of a zillion flowering plants, literally at my fingertips! I learned a few tricks to achieving a professional-looking design in the process and have had fun building and experimenting in our gardens ever since.
Our new house already had great landscaping “bones,” with several mature shrubs, perennials, and hardscaping in place. There’s really nothing I need to do, but I can never leave well enough alone and am itching to plant “just a few more” perennials, move this over there, dig out that shrub, divide those day lilies, and…
Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, so there may be elements to garden design that look gorgeous to me but meh to you. I tend to favor the English Country Cottage look: a bit of formality paired with a bit of whimsy; neatly clipped boxwoods next to overflowing flowerbeds; formal brick and stone next to natural river rock and mulch; flowing with geometric.
Here are 10 ways to create an English Garden look at your own house. Keep in mind that English gardens aren’t made in a weekend; they are cultivated and developed over years of enjoyment. 🙂
1. Plant a hedge of boxwoods , yews, or similar shrubs to build “walls” in your garden. They create structure, add formality and an element of surprise on the other side.
2. Repeat the materials of your house in your gardens. Stone or brick walls, fountains, and paths help the garden look like a unified extension of the house.
3. Focus on perennial plants. An English garden looks vastly different from season to season. Bulbs and moss phlox are one of the first signs of spring; winter berries, bronze colored sedums, and golden ornamental grass blowing in the wind bring beauty to a snow-covered landscape. The “in between” spaces can be filled with annuals for color all season long.
4. Make sure you have an area in which to sit back and enjoy your garden. Wooden Adirondack chairs, wrought iron, wicker or bent willow, and teak patio furniture compliment an English design.
5. Plant in layers. Taller plants should be in the background, medium plants in the middle, and shorter plants in the foreground.
6. Build a decorative structure. Picket fences, arbors, and trellises not only add height and functionality to a garden, but they also provide a place to showcase vines and other climbing plants such as roses.
7. More is more. English gardens utilize every bit of growing space. Forget spacing rules; go for blooming plants in a variety of shapes, sizes and textures that spill over into walkways, climb up arbors, and burst out of planters.
8. Add some whimsy. Too much “stuff” in a garden can make it look littered and messy, but an intentionally placed birdhouse, chair, watering can, birdbath, or gazing ball, keeps a garden fun and surprising.
9. Choose “old-fashioned” plants. English gardens explode with “romantic” blooms like peonies, hydrangeas, roses, foxgloves, hollyhocks, daisies, and cosmos.
10. Just add water. A fountain, a pond, a bird bath, a lake: English gardens typically involve a water feature of some sort. Water adds a sense of tranquility and peacefulness appreciated by all who stop to smell the roses.
What’s your favorite gardening style? Are you an English landscape lover too?
Beautiful pictures and lovely tips. I wish my real English garden looked as good. In reality, I struggle with finding time for the garden (I am a home educator and a carer for an elderly relative) and with the cost of the plants/materials for a splendid garden. Tips on both of these would be great!
Good day to you
There must be an exchange system in your neighbourhood to swap plants with a fellowvillager . Or , start it up by yourself , ask your family , neighbours , or other folks you know to look in their own garden for plants they are caring for (litturaly/in the mind) not any longer .
Hope you find a way or other , and may the care for your relative be grateful .
Simply stunning! I’m mostly a practical vegetable gardener, but this year am starting to focus more on making it beautiful.
If you want to see one like these, take a short trip to Grimsby! Our former neighbors, Mr.and Mrs. Brown (with real English accents) had a superb one! Actually, it’s 12 years since we moved, and they were seniors, so I’m not sure it would be the same. I always admired it as we walked by since they had a corner property.
Wow is that your house?? So pretty!!!
You have a beautiful yard/gardens and house!!! Love it!!!
I never knew that English gardens don’t really care about space that much, so you should grow your plants where you want them to. I will share this information with my husband to let him know what design I would want in our backyard. We will be hiring professionals to do it for us as well since I do not have the time to do it due to continuing my studies every weekend.
I am trying to create an English garden look in one of my beds. I have been collecting perrenials but find that towards the middle of the summer they are long/tall and leggy. How to you get them to keep standing upright? Is it a matter of spacing? Am I putting them too far apart?
I’m a English garden Lover and these gardens are gorgeous but one must remember reality too alot of real English gardens are not new gardens they have been planted years ago and tended and added too .
Thats always been my favorite thing to learn about growing up was hearing my mom talk to relatives to see how this plant in their beds was doing and what was new and a slip here or there or deviding plants up in season . Gardening is a beautiful tradition to start with a family and the longer you give a garden a little bit of love but let it be and add a bit of whimsy your garde can be as beautiful as a English garden ,
Lady Rebecca