Cottage Garden Climate and Soil

Flowers seen from the street
- summer

• The type of soil you have is not really important.
• Cottage garden plants are hardy, generally resistant to disease and will grow in almost any type of soil.
• How do we know this?
  Our garden was an environmental nightmare when John arrived in March, 1996.
• Your local climate is not really a problem either as long as you choose your cottage garden plants to suit it.
  No good trying to grow sun and drought-loving plants in areas of heavy and regular rainfall, it'll never happen.
• However, if your garden tends to be waterlogged, as ours was, you will need to solve this problem as part of preparing your soil.

Our own Experience

Wijbosch, Schijndel, in the province of Brabant, The Netherlands (where we live), is wet from early autumn to mid-spring. The local marsh, known as Wijboschbroek, is five minutes walk from our home. Our cottage garden soil is a sand ridge on top of a layer of blue-grey clay at a depth of 60cm. / 80cm. with sandy soil beneath layer of clay.

The clay foundation layer prevents rain water from draining off in autumn and winter when our underground water table levels are very high and the result is waterlogged, boggy ground.

We solved this problem by creating drainage sinkholes, as we explain in drainage for waterlogged soil.

Sandy soil does not retain water and dries out very quickly in summer, a problem we solved with home-grown compost.

The compost helped the earthworms, who started arriving soon after the clear-up, to create humus and thus enable our soil to retain more water in summer, when it is needed.

When I first occupied our home (I was still a bachelor at that time, Judy and I met a little later), I was greeted by the worst soil I've ever come across - and I've gardened in Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

The "garden" had been used for thirty years as a motorcycle repair works and depot. When a shed was no good any more, the solution was simple - dig a hole, break up the old shed, bury the rubbish in the hole and build another work shed.

While digging up 250 square meters of land, I accumulated an enormous pile of old builders rubble, bricks, paving stones, glass, rusty tin cans, pieces of concrete, asbestos and plastic rubbish. Throughout the job, not a single earthworm slithered away - the soil had been ruined with spilled petrol, waste oil and I don't really want to know what else.

Today, 11 years on, the many photos of our garden are proof that we have successfully solved these problems. We grow and eat our own fruit, and it's delicious, no poison here anymore!

What Makes a Cottage Garden?

Flowering plants, flowers, fruit and herbs make a cottage garden - it's as simple as that. They, and the bees, butterflies, dragonflies and other wildlife who cannot resist their invitation, are what cottage gardens are all about.

You will always have too many plants:

• Many, if not all, of them will come from family, friends and neighbours, and through exchanging seeds and cuttings with other enthusiastic gardeners.
• Cottage garden plants are also known as pass-along plants - a nice, friendly description. After all, you wouldn't pass plants on to people you know personally if you weren't sure that they'd live up to your glowing description, would you?
• You never know in advance when you will obtain new plants, so your plants are closely packed together at random in small groups.
• You'll often have to search for space (which is at a premium) for your new treasures. You wouldn't wish to insult all those nice people by not planting their donations either, would you?
• Bear in mind as you dig up your garden layout that your perfect design will change over time, if only due to the generosity of others.
• This lack of plant predictability leads to a romantic and informal aura in a small, cosy and private paradise, the very essence of a cottage garden.
• It's a carefree chaos, often referred to as a "natural garden" or "wild garden". A place to forget the hustle and bustle of modern life.

So What's Next?

It's time for hard labour: Preparation - digging and clearing your ground is tiresome but unavoidable. You'll dig, I'll advise - seems fair to me!