The modern take on the cottage garden mixes unusual edibles, perennials, vivid annuals and shrubs. A Bulbine frutescens ‘Yellow’; B Rhus typhina ‘Tiger Eyes’; C Nicotiana x sanderae ‘Baby Bella’; D N. langsdorfii; E Gaillardia ‘Burgundy’; F Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’; G Solenostemon (syn. Coleus) scutellarioides ‘Lancelot Velvet Mocha’; H Capsicum annuum ‘Black Pearl’; I Rosa ‘Pink Knockout’; J Helianthus ‘Ring of Fire’; K Hibiscus acetosella ‘Red Shield’; L Brassica oleracea ‘Scarlet’; M purple basil.

 

The “modern” cottage garden could refer to the style’s revival in the 1870s as another counteraction not only in response to Victorian bedding, but also to the Industrial Revolution itself. Some people felt called to return to the land, back to the pre-industrialization days for health, handiwork, and design inspiration. “Hand-made” was the byword of the day. The leaders of the Aesthetic Movement and its descendant, the Arts & Crafts movement, believed that nothing should be mass-produced, and encouraged the reemergence of the home artisan. Naturally, that meant home gardens, as well.

One principal director of both movements in art and design was William Morris, who created fabric and wallpaper based on the flowers he knew from his own garden and those that surrounded the humble cottages of Southeast England. Like William Robinson, Morris was a critic of Victorian schemes, describing them as “... an aberration of the human mind which otherwise I should have been ashamed to warn you of. It is technically called carpet-bedding. Need I explain further? I had rather not, for when I think of it even, when I am quite alone, I blush with shame at the thought.”

Those flowers making their way into the fabric and wallpapers by Morris were the favored of the time: sunflowers, hollyhock, iris, pansies, geranium, Solomon’s seal, evening primrose, marigold, tulips, lupine, and of course, roses.

Today’s cottage garden style does not focus on food production, but retains the idea of mingling as many disparate varieties as possible in close quarters. Tender perennials and oversize annuals have found their way into these maximalist plantings. You might see tall cannas and blood bananas, and strange red-leafed hibiscus and its cousins: giant red okra and red-leafed cotton.

The relaxed cottage garden look is still with us. The hominess can be enhanced with a casual abandon of encouraging many plants to self-sow—to drop their seeds to the ground in hope that they will sprout and emerge to bloom in the following years. This is an egalitarian scheme in which any plant is accepted as long as it can duke it out with its neighbors for a space to grow.

The source of these plants was New Jersey’s Frelinghuysen Arboretum.