Cottage Garden Design Elements

Here's a short list of ideas I've gathered from my research so far:
Style: informal or traditional materials
Dense plantings reduce areas where weeds form!
Flowers, herbs and veggies are planted together
Cutting flowers, and hedging
Rectangular plots (formal)
Practical paths featuring local brick or stone
No lawns (informal), instead use tufts of grasses and/or ground cover
Natural looking materials
Focal points, such as arbors, traditional or antique
fencing,  and gates
Even an unexpected addition such as this clay pot purposefully turned on it's side and filled with Lobelia add to the garden's serendipity.

Soil Matters

Our soil on our small residential lot is Clay and Rock filled. We've also got quite a bit of Queen Palm roots that have crept into this lawn area over the years, so that just add's to the difficulty of the project.

I've written  about our  new amendments, below. We've got them tilled in at least 6-8" in, probably not ideal, but I can manage to dig in the bed now. Plus the mulch will keep moisture in and slow weed growth until the beds have matured. I've been real careful not to pat down any of the bed-including not stepping all over it! This should really help the irrigation get down deep in the bed, plus add air and circulation.

Shovel Ready

7 days into the first stage in our overall Coastal Cottage Garden project, as shown from above.

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  We've got the beds laid out with local round stones, dug up from our land. 
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  I spent over an hour at the local garden waste recycling/composting plant where I was able to purchase 3 large garbage bags of soil for the project. Since we are local residents, each bag cost $1.00-this is obviously a new favorite place of mine!
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  I had to shovel the soil into my own bags, but you can't beat the price or the quality and diversity of soil amendments they offer.
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  I brought home 2 bags of Humic and 1 bag of Perennial Mulch.

Well, with the rocks in place according to the plan, and soil amendments in hand, it was time to get busy!

I had given the lawn area several days to dry out to ease the excavation. My wonderful husband showed me a fantastic tool to help dig up the lawn...it's a type of pick axe with a scoop on the end. It is best used like a swinging pendulum. Many hours and sweat from the summer heat later, the first bed had been cleared of grass and existing plant material. The bed was then tilled up (husband's strength needed!) with the pick end of the axe. I added several wheelbarrow's full of Humic and tilled that in as well. I worked to rid the bed of any remaining weeds, roots, rocks (ugh!), boulders (double ugh!) , and gigantic root filled dirt clods (triple ugh!) . I broke down by hand, or hula hoe, any small dirt clogs, working also to even out the bed. I then spread  a 2-3 inch topper of Perennial mulch over the bed as the sun went down for the day. Tough Work!

The Plan-Part One

We have several areas in need of improvement, but this grass area (pictured) is first on the long list.

We were able to meet with long time landscaper (and relative) Gary,10 days ago. I had spent about two week previous to our meeting, measuring and laying out our plans on paper before our visit. I also took a dozen or more photos of just about every nook and cranny of our yard. The plans were mostly accurate and included various plant names in the legend; plus a compass rose.

Thanks to our meeting and talking with Gary, we established an overall plan to achieve our desired Cottage Garden. For this backyard lawn area, he suggested, "just rip it up and out". He drew a new smaller sketch of the area which includes three, new garden beds trimmed in stone and a central meandering path pressed from DG (decomposed granite) or small wood chips. We have the choice to enhance this path with pieces of flagstone and add some creeping thyme in the future.

We also discussed all the other areas of improvement for the new Cottage Garden, plants that do well in our area and that are within the theme, problem areas, and a Cottage garden path in the front of our home that just needed a nudge to make it more so.

Location, Location, Location

Carlsbad, California, United States of America

Latitude: 33* 2' 49.54" N
Longitude: 117* 17' 53.61" W

Site Location is 3 miles due west from the Pacific Ocean, as the crow flies.
First area of the overall project is 12' x 18'. It consists of a small backyard lawn area.
There about 6-7 areas in the garden/yard that will be redesigned.

And yes, this first area is in desperate need of design, rejuvination and life! It is also a primary view from our kitchen window, so working on this area first will allow us to immediately enjoy our new cottage garden asap. Plus, it will continue to inspire us to keep working on the overall project.

Welcome to the Coastal Cottage Garden

These posts, photos,sketches and notes are intended to describe, in diary form, the transformation of our hodgepodge, coastal suburban landscape to the ever popular, romantic Cottage Garden style.

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  Posts will include activites done in the garden and helpful hints.


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  Photographs will show before, during and after site descriptions.


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  Sketches will be from my garden journal pages relating to this overall project.


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  Notes...well, who knows, maybe reminders or great ideas!

Enjoy