Today’s yards tend to favor grass over flowers and shrubs, particularly in the front. For those of us who love gardening and the careful planning and care that goes into creating a thriving garden, a front yard without flowers just isn’t quite right. For bold color and dense, and slightly overgrown gardens, look no further than a cottage style garden!
Cottage style gardens are carefree, slightly overgrown, and absolutely bursting with color. They go well with any style house, but a cottage garden never looks more natural than around an old, small cottage.
We’re pleased to present a selection of beautiful cottage gardens that look as though they’ve been transported from the English countryside. These designs are all very typical of cottage gardens, and you’ll see some of the most popular features, including climbing vines, arbors, decorative items, rustic paths, and overflowing garden beds filled with ornamental flowers, edibles, and herbs.
The flowers used vary, of course, according to your location, but cottage gardens should always have a mixture of natives and exotics, with varying sizes, colors, and shapes.
We hope you’ll love these quaint, beautiful garden designs as much as we do!
1. Old-World Style Cottage With Front Garden and Lamp Post
This beautiful cottage has a brick chimney, thatch roofing, and a rustic pathway that divides as it nears the front door. The walkway is rimmed by expanses of brightly colored wildflowers and overgrown shrubbery. An iron lamp post sits just beyond the planting beds, and provides ample light during the evening hours. No neighbors are visible through the trees and shrubs, giving this home a solitary atmosphere.
2. Brick Cottage With Brick Fence and Wooden Gate
The slightly curved brick wall around this cottage home has a single gate blocking the walkway from the street, lending a further quaint feel to the home’s curb appeal. Above the short wall are the tops of untrimmed shrubs and hedges, along with several trees. Closer to the home, topiaries and hanging baskets lend further color to the yard. To the rear of the home’s property is a small white picket fence.
3. Thatch Roof Cottage With Expansive Garden
A cottage with an absolutely enormous front garden filled to the brim with wildflowers, hedges, shrubs, and flowering trees. The center of the yard is manicured grass, providing a play area and space to walk by to water the garden. To the left is a raised concrete planter filled with even more flowers. Behind the home are tall trees, shading the rear of the home.
4. Blue Cottage with Porch and Stone Edging
This small cottage has a rustic feel to it, with exposed natural wood throughout. The concrete steps are led up to by a flagstone path. As the cottage is in the middle of the woods, the lot is shaded, meaning shade-loving or tolerant plants are necessary to have a thriving garden. The planting bed to the left of the home is filled with these plants, and outlined by large boulders.
5. White Cottage with Flagstone Path
A lovely white stucco cottage with an attached garden shed, flagstone pathways, and several lovely garden areas leading up to the front doors. This cottage is a multi-family home, and the gardens are shared by the occupants. The garden features mainly shrubs and tall plants, but also a variety of roses and exotics. In the center garden, we can see a few flowering foxglove.
6. Yellow and Green Cottage With Stone Fence and Retaining Walls
This lovely yellow cottage with bold grass-green doors and window ledges and an enormous walled courtyard leading up to the front door. The large format stones of the courtyard are interrupted by two half-circle planting beds, which frame the walkway to the door. The retaining walls are rimmed by more planting beds, repeating the same color as in the two center planting beds.
7. Two-Story Cottage With Flagstone Path
This lovely two-story cottage has a single, well-manicured flagstone pathway leading up to the front door. Visible near the entrance to the home’s garden is a twig structure, which is a common feature of cottage gardens. The rest of the yard is filled to the brim with daffodils and tulips, with no visible common grass. Visible closer to the home are trellises and large shrubs.
8. Cottage With Overgrown White Picket Fence
A small, but lovely cottage with a thatch roof, viewed from the other side of the home’s white picket fence. The yard itself is literally overflowing with plants, to the point where vines and flowers are climbing over the fence and into the manicured yard next to the cottage. The vines have even taken over one of the home’s trees, in addition to the many trellises throughout the garden.
9. Cottage Garden With Edibles and Birdhouses
A beautiful yellow cottage with a trapezoidal window on the second floor looking out over the yard. The yard is divided by several rows of plants and trees, mostly edibles. To the left, we can see a few decorative pieces, while on the right we see a birdhouse designed and built to look like a miniature version of the cottage. A simple stone pathway leads up to the door, flanked by small shrubs. This is a cottage garden in its infancy.
10. Brick Cottage With Untrimmed Hedges
This rather large brick cottage is surrounded by a brick wall and features a small gate that beckons visitors towards the front walkway. Over the top of the walls, the garden’s plants are visible, with several even leaning over the wall. This garden favors flowering plants against the wall, and smaller shrubs and ornamental trees closer to the home’s front door. To the right is a massively overgrown hedge.
11. Traditional Cottage With Blue Accents
A beautiful white and blue cottage with a large yard and plenty of planting beds bursting with color. Perhaps the brightest display is the large, rather unruly rose bush growing near the small covered porch to the rear-left of the cottage. While most of the yard grows wild, several of the topiaries and hedges are neatly groomed, as is the expanse of manicured lawn in the center.
12. Front Walk of Traditional Cottage With Blue Accents
Another look at the front of the above cottage, showing the simple stone pathway leading to the covered porch, surrounded by lush flora, including tall flowers, large flowering bushes, and even ornamental maples and flowering trees. Scalloping details on the roof enhance the quaint atmosphere of the cottage in this serene backdrop. A few of the bushes actually grow over the pathway.
13. White Cottage with Gravel Pathways
A more manicured example of a cottage garden, featuring a planting bed surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges, with a more wild garden on the far right, filled with edibles. The pathways in this garden are gravel, and meet near the front of the home, leading to the steps up to the uncovered porch. Rustic wooden fence poles and trellises add a bit of Old-World flavor to the design.
14. Rectangular Cottage with Thick Wildflowers
A rustic cottage with wooden fencing around the neat rows of flowers. The various white and magenta daisies meld together to look like a never-ending meadow of wildflowers. Truly a sight to behold. The other side of the home is barren in comparison to the lush Eden of the front yard. As is typical for cottage gardens, the ornamental flowers are mixed together with edibles.
15. Stone Cottage with Stacked Stone Fence
A cottage close to the street with a simple, short stacked rock wall surrounding the property. The garden is filled with thick flowering bushes and plants, along with several small ornamental evergreens and a single tall flowering tree. The thatched roof brings to mind the English countryside and sits like a thick hat upon the top of the light brick home.
16. Two-Story Cottage With Stone Retaining Wall and Trailing Flowering Vines
A stately cottage with a wooden shingle roof and a stacked stone wall on the left side of the property, with only treetops and hedges visible beyond. Next to the wall is a small path to the rear of the home, which is separated from the front garden by a small wooden fence. On the other side of the fence is where the garden begins, featuring pastel flowers and lots of climbing vines, which have taken over the lower left side of the home.
17. Multi-Family Cottage With Japanese Maple and Climbing Vines
A massive stone cottage with room for multiple families, with the entrances separated by picket fences. A gravel and dirt walkway leads up to the right-most unit, which is surrounded by thick bushes and spots of bright red flowers. With a nod towards exotics, the design includes a lovely Japanese maple. The front of the home is covered in climbing vines, which turn bright shades during autumn.
18. Contemporary Brick Cottage With Meadow of Flowers
A beautiful stone brick cottage with a bursting garden filled with ornamental trees, climbing vines, wildflowers, bushes, and flowering trees. Perhaps the most stunning addition to the garden is the large, bright cornflower blue flowering ornamental tree near the front door. Other eclectic additions to the garden include a shepherd’s crook that holds bird feeders and a stone retaining wall just visible to the left.
Source: gardenloversclub