The 10 best cottage garden plants, shrubs and flowers to include in a traditional cottage-style backyard
Professional gardeners share their pick of the best cottage garden plants for a charming country-style backyard
Emily Smith
Make cottage garden plants the backbone of your borders for lasting loveliness in a country-style plot. Experts, professionals, and garden-lovers alike agree that the starting point for almost all cottage garden ideas is planting.
Choosing the right plants, shrubs and flowers is key to creating that quintessentially relaxed aesthetic and colourful final look that is so synonymous with traditional cottage garden design.
The best cottage garden plants, as chosen by experts
Our expert guide to the best cottage garden plants will help you choose the right plants for your outdoor space, with tips on where to plant your flowers and shrubs for the best results year-round.
1. Aquilegia
For a classic country-style flowering plant that adds shape and colour to your planting, this is gardener, TV presenter, and author Sarah Raven's first choice of plant. "Aquilegia, the good old Granny’s bonnet, is a classic cottage garden favourite which flowers through the spring to early summer, with its nodding flowers like an elaborate hooped skirt," she explains.
"They are fairly unfussy about soil type. A neutral, moist but well-drained soil will do well, happy in full sun or partial shade." This is a very low-maintenance cottage garden plant, and once established, it only requires watering once a week, making it one of the best garden plants for those who are new to gardening. It's all these qualities that also make this plant thrive in meadows and woodlands, where it is most commonly found.
There are around 70 different species of this perennial plant, which means there's a wide choice of colours available to suit your planting scheme. This plant typically flowers from mid-spring to summer, so make sure to plant it in early spring for best results.
2. Foxgloves
"Foxgloves make some of the very best cottage garden 'early summer' garden plants and cut flowers," explains Sarah. "If you pick the king flower – the main spire, you create lots of prince flowers and the plants will then go on flowering for longer."
The tired bell-shaped flowers are synonymous with a meadow-like flower garden, one that welcomes a plethora of pollinators to take refuge inside the petals. The statuesque spire of this much-loved cottage garden plant is ideal for planting at the back of borders to give the planting height, growing up to 4ft tall.
"Digitalis purpurea ' Sutton's Apricot' is lovely soft pink foxglove and is one of my favourite plants," Sarah shares with Woman&Home. This delightful variety of flowers from May to July is best planted in April.
See our guide to the best places to buy plants online to find an online retailer that will ship garden plants, like foxgloves, to you directly.
3. Philadelphus
If you can only afford the space for one large shrub in your garden, make it mock orange (Philadelphus). It truly is one of the stars of the early midsummer cottage garden, and there are varieties to suit large or small borders.
While the white blooms can be single or double, all varieties have a powerfully intoxicating orange blossom or jasmine-like fragrance and make great partners for old-fashioned roses, which flower at the same time.
Try a variegated type, which has green leaves with a creamy-white margin, and Philadelphus ‘Aureus’, which has glowing golden foliage, making it stand out in a border.
At just 1.2m tall, this variety is useful in small, cottage gardens as a backdrop for shorter plants with dark green leaves.
The foliage ultimately changes to green as summer begins, but as the shrub has strong branches, it can be used to support lightweight clematis, such as ‘Niobe’, to maintain interest long after the flowers and foliage fade.
Philadelphus thrives in sun or partial shade and will tolerate any soil type, including heavy clay soil. It’s best to prune as soon as the flowers fade to encourage new growth that will carry the blossoms next year.
4. Fuchsias
Create interest in late summer borders with hardy fuchsias; the variety ‘Tom West’ is particularly striking, having variegated cream and green foliage with cerise veins, which make a great foil for the red and purple blooms.
Find it a sheltered spot in full sun or semi-shade that’s protected from cold, drying winds.
The pale gold and cream flowers of ‘Graham Thomas’ are borne all summer, not just in one flush, so it’s a good choice if you're looking for small garden ideas.
Train it on a wall or fence as a backdrop to borders or over an arch to create a fragrant gateway.
If fragrance is a priority for you, make sure you add the sweet, smoky perfume of lavender. Use it in abundance around sitting areas to create the perfect ambience for a relaxing summer afternoon.
5. Lilac
Lilac bushes have an indestructible quality along with powerfully fragrant flowers, so it's a good option if you're a gardening beginner.
Syringa vulgaris is the common lilac, and the variety ‘Sensation’ is outstanding, with rich purple-red flowers with a distinct white edge to each petal, creating a beautiful bi-colour effect.
‘Carpe Diem’ is a startling new introduction with semi-double flowers opening first a delicate light blue and then fading to pinkish-mauve.
‘Madame Lemoine’, which has double white flowers, is one of the toughest varieties and is able to withstand temperatures down to -20ºC. Use them as feature plants, hedging, and cut the blooms for the vase.
Along with roses, fuchsias, and wisteria, lilac can also be cleverly trained as a mini tree. Staked and carefully pruned, it will arch down in a loose, trailing curtain of leaves and flowers, making a perfect focal point in a border or container.
6. Buddleja
Another shrub that works well as a mini tree is the Buddleja alternifolia, which produces slender, arching shoots clothed in silvery-grey leaves, and blooms with fragrant lilac-colored flowers in early summer. They're also a fantastic plant for pollinators and will bring in lots of butterflies.
It’s often known as the butterfly bush because, throughout the summer, its blooms, typically dense flower spikes in shades of white, red, pink, blue, and maroon, attract clouds of Fritillaries, Red Admirals, and Tortoiseshells that come to feed on its honey-sweet nectar.
While it grows best in fertile, well-drained soil, buddleja is also very drought-tolerant and will survive in some pretty tough soil conditions.
It will reach 2.4m or so, but for patio pots, there’s also the dwarf and very compact buddleja ‘Buzz’, which grows to just 90cm tall.
If you’d like something a bit different, you could also consider the sweetly scented pompom blooms of the orange ball buddleja, Buddleja globosa. It grows well in limy soil and coastal gardens if sheltered from cold winds.
Left to its own devices, it will make a massive shrub but can be pruned after flowering and shaped like a small tree.
7. Hydrangeas
As its name suggests, mophead hydrangeas produce huge dome-shaped clusters of flowers that can stretch up to 30cm across, in blue, pink, red or white and shades in between.
They are also a good choice for coastal cottage gardens, and the long-lasting flowers, which have strong, straight stems, are ideal for cutting. Mopheads bloom in early summer, and the old flowers add colour to autumn displays, even in gardens that see a bit of afternoon shade.
Compact mophead hortensia varieties, such as Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Altona’, are great for patio pots or raised beds where you can control the acidity of the soil.
With a hint of lime in the soil, the flowers of this variety are bright pink, but when grown in acid or ericaceous soil, they will turn shades of blue.
A late-flowering shrub that will revive flagging borders is the tree hollyhock, Hibiscus ‘Blue Bird’, that produces exotic-looking, trumpet-shaped blooms up to 7.5cm across with red markings around a cream centre. It’s a good choice for partnering with dahlias and cannas to create a tropical-looking scheme in a sheltered hotspot.
8. Potting Phygelius
Great for coastal cottage gardens and patio pots, Cape fuchsia (phygelius) is a medium-sized semi-evergreen shrub that will bloom all summer long, even in a drought.
A severe winter is likely to kill this South African native, so take precautions and raise new plants from cuttings and plant out after the risk of frost is past.
For a good effect, grow Phygelius x rectus ‘Moonraker’, which has creamy yellow blooms, in a night garden alongside plants with white flowers and grey foliage, or, for when the sun shines, combine it with plants with flowers in mauve and lavender shades.
This shrub is a great gift for gardeners, as you can gift it in a pot and then they can decide whether or not to plant it out in their garden or keep it on the patio to enjoy year after year.
9. Delphiniums
"No summer border or perennial cut flower patch is complete without its fair share of delphiniums," says Sarah. She describes this adored cottage garden plant, also commonly known as Larkspur, as "the most statuesque towering spires for any garden."
This tall perennial plant, ideal for beds and borders, features tall stems packed with single or double-headed flowers that bloom during the summer months.
"Delphiniums are one of the most spectacular cut flowers you can grow. Grown from seed, this is a cheap way of introducing delphiniums into your garden and vase."
10. Eurybia x herveyi (Aster ‘Twilight’)
This hardy cottage garden plant is ideal to welcome a splash of colour to borders. Professional gardener Lucy Conochi, at Lucy Conochie Designs, explains to woman&home, "It's an absolute must-have plant which is well-loved by garden designers, growers, and pollinating insects."
"This easy mid-height border plant will add valuable late summer colour to your garden and has beautiful fluffy seed heads which can be left standing all winter," explains Lucy.
"It is less invasive than other asters; this mildew-resistant beauty can be allowed to gently weave its way through other plants. It is very versatile and will grow in full sun to dappled shade, associating well with ferns, grasses, and flowering perennials."
FAQs
What flowers bloom the longest in a cottage garden?
If you're a fan of late summer flowers, you might be looking for plants that will bloom the longest in your summer garden.
"Hardy geraniums can bloom for the longest when included in a cottage garden, with some plants flowering from April to September. Some varieties can bloom later in spring, but will continue to bloom into autumn," starts Richard Barker, horticulture expert and Managing Director of LBS Horticulture.
"Cutting the flowers back after their first flush of flowers has faded, usually in July or August, can encourage the plant to produce a second flush of flowers in early autumn," he adds.
With 4 years in the industry, Richard is an expert in horticulture and the commercial director at LBS Horticulture. He is keen to share his knowledge with both experienced and beginner gardeners, and prides himself on keeping up to date with the latest horticultural trends.
If you want to bring your cottage garden plants inside, why not try growing some of the best cutting garden flowers too? That way, you can enjoy the whimsical beauty indoors as well.
