Cottage garden fused with tropical

Hi all,

I am wanting to create a cottage/tropical garden fused look.

I have been inspired by gardens on here, most recently by Tropical_Gaz.

Can anyone recommend a good tropical gardening book? I could do with one handy to research the plant types i can easily care for and what would work best in creating the heights to my borders

i already have 2 cordylines, a fan palm , pampas grass, cannas, day lillies, dahlias and crocosmia but could do with a bit more height/structure

many thanks in advance

 

Personally, I don't think the styles go together at all well.

Cottage gardens being very casual, loose, slightly messy, uncoordinated, colourful, non-matchy, relaxed, eclectic, natural, artless, practical, lower maintenance, organic in development, timeless.

Tropical gardens (UK style) being structured, mannered, controlled, limited in colour palette, narrow range of planting, designery, architectural, fashion-oriented, impractical, very high-maintenance.

The two together do not compute.

The "exotic" style has been current for a good 10 years now, and while it's had an interesting influence on what we grow and how we design our gardens I think it's well overdue for going out of fashion. If B&Q is peddling it, it's time to move on, IMO. Not that I'm recommending chucking the baby out with the bathwater, mind, just the input of fresh ideas.

It's worth bearing mind that an actual tropical cottage garden looks pretty much like this:

Give or take a few scruffy cassava plants, a goat and a washing line. Probably not the romantic vision you had in mind.

 

^^ THIS ^^

Those are the 3 that I have got

 

This is mine:




Height:

Bananas, (tall) Grasses


Paulownia tomentosa (stooled each spring, it will get to 8' or 10' with massive leaves), and Ricinus grown annually from seed.

Structure:

Tetrapanax papyrifer 'rex', Gunnera, Bamboo (has height too),


Tree ferns (can have height, but costs money!)

Not sure about mixing with Cottage Garden though. However, you can put some dashes of colour in here & there. I have planted Coleus along the edges, for example:


and unusual forms of Amaranthus (See next post)

and then there are Brugmansia:

 

Amaranthus:


Elephant Head


Fox Tail

 

I think that it is possible to combine the two with care. Go tropical in the shape of Bananas, Cannas, and hardy palms and use mostly cottage garden plants with a twist for colour. Those I can help with;
Lobelia tupa. Hardy for me and reaching up over two metres. Mine are a bit exposed at the moment as my garden is still work in progress, but this will give you an idea..................




Foxgloves are a cottage garden fave, so here's a Digitalis with a difference - D.lanata..............


It reaches about a metre in height and is a properly hardy perennial.

Salvias are a good choice. Salvia "Black and Blue" is hardy and reaches 1.5 to 2 metres.................


A couple of spring bloomers that look quite exotic. Not overly tall (but in the spring not much is) bot both are hardy. First is Polyganatum x hybridum.....................


And the second is Uvularia grandiflora........................


Some houseplants are terrific outdoors for the summer. Impatiens niamniamensis romps away in the ground and looks uber tropical....................


Don't forget climbers. Bomarea edulis/hirtella I am told is hardy and I'll find out next year as mine goes in the ground this spring..................




As far as books goes I can't help, but I personally swear by my copy of the RHS A to Z of Garden Plants. It tells you all you need to know.

 

It's worth thinking about the origin of what we think of as cottage garden plants. They are generally perennials, but originally were common, easy to propagate plants that could be swapped between friends and neighbours. The sort of plants that poor people would put in their garden because they were easily obtainable and being strong growers would spread to fill the space available. Food plants of various kinds would also be important. They would be planted for convenience rather than design but end up looking pleasing because they create large masses of colour and form when they are mature. There would be a cheerful mix of heights, colours and textures because they weren't planted with a designer's eye, they were planted by peasants who couldn't afford much but liked to prettify their space.

What we think of as tropical plants may fulfil some of those criteria (such as easy propagation) but are often hard to obtain and difficult to grow, prone to dying in the winter. Also, they are a marketer's dream in that people are willing to pay the earth to acquire the latest fashionable tropical rarity. They are the antithesis of green in that most of these plants are grown elsewhere, possibly overseas, and then carted to the point of sale. It has got to the stage where people can turn up at one of the specialist emporiums and be milked of thousands of pounds in return for an identikit ready-to-plant tropical garden to take away in their car. As a result, most tropical gardens look very similar with not much imagination put into the planting. They have become a commodity to be bought and sold, very far from the spirit behind original cottage gardens.

It is high time we re-evaluated the philosophy behind the tropical look and also the aesthetics behind the original idea and look to fresher ways of using the best of the fashionable tropical plants.

Come back Craig 1987, ignore my rant, I'm on my high horse today!

 

@Craig1987 - do you have a photo of your space? What are your facilities to overwinter plants?

@Madahhlia - rant on! I think that there is a little confusion here though, as what Craig is really after are exotic looking or sub-tropical plants that have a chance of survival in his garden (I can think of no true tropicals that will survive outside of a heated greenhouse). I'm not much help there, only good for suggesting less common flowering hardy perennials for the cottage garden side of it.

 

Sorry, I can be a bit of a shrinking violet sometimes!

It's not that I don't like it, I've got a banana plant. A sick, sad one.

But you are very, very good at that!

 

Opinions and tastes vary, that being the spice-of-life of course

I see pictures of a solitary tree fern in the middle of a lawn - looks dismal to me. Or a 2' wider border around a square/rectangular back garden with a row of things including a single banana or two, and so on. Does nothing for me ...

What I like is a winding narrow-ish path through a jungle of plants. Great Dixter is a good example where Christo Lloyd controversially (many years ago) converted the Rose garden he inherited, originally designed by Lutens, into an Exotic Garden. He kept the beds and paths, and with plants with much more generous canopies than roses, the paths become very narrow and the plants imposing.

This is, believe it or not!, a path at Great Dixter:


Jungle Nuts garden, on HTUK, is an example that I like







I also like @JWK's exotic garden. His garden is on a slope, so I expect the winding path approach wouldn't be feasible, he has a bold border, above eyeline, which looks dramatic.

 

That's funny, so do I! In fact, that describes my own garden pretty well, small though it is, and the look that I'm aiming for. I suppose what I'm saying is that certain plants are getting over-used.

 

WOW, thank you all very much for your replies. This is exactly what i was looking for.
Apologies for causing any confusion to anyone, Longk has it spot on:

The above mixed with a few lupins, cosmos, lillies, black eyed susan etc.. to really pack a border.

Kristen - thank you very much for adding pictures. I really like the look of the tall grasses in your second picture. Do you happen to know the names for them? That Brugmansia is stunning! i definately want one of those. I love those Amaranthus but i think i may struggle fitting them in due to their spread.

Longk - again, thanks for the pictures. That black blue salvia is perfect for one side of my border where i'll be having more purples. I'll definately be buying Polyganatum x hybridum. I think it would look nice to go along side my bleeding hearts. The Uvularia grandiflora will be perfect for my garden.

I will post some pictures up of my garden when i get a chance one evening. It is north facing but that very back border/wall does get sun throughout the day. This is where these plants will be going. In terms of overwintering. I have a walk in plastic greenhouse where i keep my lemon tree, alloe vera, canna, and fuchsia. I pack this with straw in the winter. I do have about 3-4ft of garage space with shelving (most of garage was converted into dining room) with no windows. I could store tubers etc. in there.

I leave Dahlias in the ground all year and havent lost one yet. My back garden is surrounded by walls with only my french doors and porch door for access so it seems to have a micro climate.

 

HAHAHAHA i do have a pair of cats that think they are mountain goats, does that count?