Cottage Garden Style

In the late 1800s, William Robinson and English Landscape Gardener

rebelled against the prevalent  Victorian Era Garden Designs of Geometrical

beds of non-hardy plants that must be kept in greenhouses in winter.  The

custom was to change these plants often to form beds of color.  Robinson

likes what the cottagers were doing in their small gardens. They planted

hardy roses, shrubs, and perennials that were either native to England

or well adapted to the English climate.  There was no need of keeping

plants over in winter and the enormous costs of heating fuel. Different

plants were planted in drifts of several, climbers were allowed to grow

up the wall. Hardy fragrant roses were grown to drape walls, etc.

William Robinson wrote a book "The Flower Garden", and along

with Gertrude Jekyll, an artist disciple of his they published a magazine

togehter. Gertrude Jekyll was a master at color, she would create

herbacious borders 200 feet in lenth and start out with one color (perhaps

 warm)  and its combinations and going through many spectrums of color

until she would end up with a cool color perhaps.  She published Color and

Garden, Wood and Garden and many other books.

The style became popular in the Unied States around the turn of the

century.  Around the 1930's it went out of vogue. However inthe 1980's

and 1990's it once again became the rage.  In England there were the

well-known designers Rosemary Verey and Penelopse Hobhouse who

were masters of this style. In the United States there was Ryan Gainey,

a native of South Carolina who lived in Atlanta, Ga., but designed

gardens all over.