How lovely! The quintessential cottage garden.

Libby your garden is soooooo cottage, I'd love to be able to wander through it, what a treat that would be.
Annette

"This must be the third or fourth year I've posted a June picture here."

And every year I say the same thing - You are the Queen of Cottage Gardening. : )

Diana

Thank you all. Time flies when you're having fun.....in a cottage garden.

Ah Libby I love love love your garden. c

definately the queen. :)

now THAT is the look I dream about - that is the epitomy of a cottage garden - beautiful .......

Lynne

Oh, beautiful. Is that a grass pathway in there? As someone who's just starting, I'd like to know how many years it took to get to this point.

Thanks,
Mary

This photo needs a key.
I made one.
Achillea, Pink Things, Peonies, Glads, Green stuff, Roses, Foxgloves, Pinks, Yellow things, Campanula, White blossoms, Petunias, big green tree.
Did I leave out anything?

I like the foxgloves silhouetted against the dark shadow, a nice touch.
It's a beautiful garden.

Nell

Beautiful, Absolutely Beautiful!

I believe the yellow things are yarrow. I think I see pink hollyhocks in the distance. Do you make a lot of bouquets for your home, Libby?

Lorna

Wow wow and more wow. It could and should be a book jacket cover on how to "cottage" garden.

Perfection !

Libby, Your garden is beautiful. I too would like to just wander through your garden.Sit down and just take it all in.

Sierra

As others have said, that is a cottage gardener's dream come true.

How long did it take you to reach this point? And how hard is it to keep up with it? (I'd love to get rid of my entire front yard and turn it into this!)

Ditto what everyone else has said!

Thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Mary Is that a grass pathway in there?
Yes. It divided the two gardens. Each garden has pathways winding through.

Nell
KEY :)

Rose - cl. cecile brunner
foxgloves - self seeded
hardy geraniums - 'Johnson's Blue', splish splash, endressii
peachleaf bellflower - blue, white
achillea - moonshine
Oriental Poppy - Coral Reef
red valerian
centaurea dealbata
nepeta - dropmore blue

A bunch of green stuff left to bloom. All perennials or annuals.

Lorna Do you make a lot of bouquets for your home, Libby?

Not as often as I used to. This garden started out as a cutting garden. I mostly have vases of a single kind of flower. Big and sometimes very tiny. The hollyhocks come later but I have huge leaves now.

a2zmom How long did it take you to reach this point? And how hard is it to keep up with it?

I've garden here for about 35 years but only in the last 8-10 years has it been a cottage garden. You can have a great looking cottage garden in three or four years. After that, it just gets bigger.
It DOES take quite a bit of time. Weeding, watering, deadheading (really important) plus plenty of dividing plants, staking etc. The list goes on. I spend hours almost everyday doing something. Or nothing, just looking :)

Libby

Your garden is as good as they come! I would place it in the dictionary under cottage garden as it is the perfect example of one! Simply beautiful :)

MsScarlet took the words out of my mouth. If there is any garden here that screams "cottage", yours is it. A happy jumble of bright blooms.

Absolute perfection.

Libby,

All your hard work has really paid off! It's always a treat to see your garden.

Everytime I go back and look at any of the pictures you've posted, I see something new and beautiful.

Marilyn

I finally got this thread to open for me so that I could see the 1 picture! I guess it was getting a lot of traffic!

I LOVE your color combinations and the combinations of foliage types. Just a beautiful cottage garden!

Question -- is there a good verbascum that will give the same height/structure as the foxglove? I can't grow foxglove very well out there in my full sun. I love my verbascum, but it's only about 3 feet high.

Cameron

Cameron All my verbascum only reach about 3' as well.
(Jackie etc). The only kind that grows tall is the common mullein (verbascum thapsus). That grows really, really tall.

{{gwi:639021}}

Libby

Wow! That's another beautiful view! How long will this peak bloom last? My flowers don't all bloom at once like that! Amazing flowers.

Cameron

WOW Libby, another breathtaking picture of your cottage garden.
Excuse me for butting in here, Cameron have you thought about foxtail lilies, I don't know if you grow these guys or not in your zone, some get quite tall.
Annette

Cameron How long will this peak bloom last?

This isn't really peak bloom, just spring bloom. I've got many, many more summer things to flower.

Thanks again everyone.
Libby

Wait, wait, I didn't comment yet.
I downloaded the 2 photos, pulled them into Photosuite and 'enhanced' them into watercolors.

Now I just pull the watercolors and sit and stare.
I can't tell for sure it's a foxglove, or a peony, so I won't say, "Oh, that doesn't grow here."
I'm seeing colors and foliage shapes. Love it.

Nell

P.S. Sometimes I go back and look at the REAL pic.

Oh Nell. :)

I've got Paintshop Pro. I going to try that.

Libby

Nell, can you post those watercolors here so we can see ?

Carol

{{gwi:698577}}

{{gwi:698582}}

Love your garden sooo much. Thanks for sharing with us.

Omigosh........a dream of a cottage garden.

I wish my flowers looked that good!

Libby, beautiful just as it is every June. Did you take a July photo? August? What about a winter shot?

Nell, your watercolors are great...and so is your garden! Ate those poppies in photo #2? The little orange flowers. What a great color!

MeMo

MeMo Well spotted! Yes, some self sown oriental oriental poppies. I never planted them. They just turned up.
As did the mullein.

Thanks again all.

Libby

Very very pretty. I wish I could get foxgloves to self seed.

Libby,

I feel very much at home in your lovely gardens, although mine aren't as well-groomed as yours. Love the rose growing up on the little building. I love the slope of your property and the wonderful backdrop of tall trees.
We are having triple digit temps here now and I am having to run the water all day long every day. Even so, the tips of leaves of some plants have gotten crunchy.

Love your Cecile growing on the little shed.
A Cecile Brunner cl. rose is on my "wish list", as is Johnson's Blue hardy geranium and one of the tall-growing Nepetas. I've tried growing the Peachleaf Bellflower here and it was not happy and never did bloom and it died the following year. I finally got a Balloon flower going.

Seems a losing battle to try to have an "English Country Garden" here on the hot, windy, dry plains where only the native grasses really flourish. Even though I don't have the income for buying all the right flowers and tools and supplies for creating my dream gardens, and I can no longer physically do all the work necessary in cottage gardening, it is photos of gardens like yours that inspires me, and I just can't give up trying!

Such beauty and what colour! I imagine the perfume is heavenly.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

Thank you for sharing the results of your hard work.

~ Annie
....greeeeen with envy!

Colors, texture, points of interest ... it's divine! A perfect cottage garden.

Edna

Whoa Nellie!
Love your watercolors of Libby's gardens.

That's perty!

Annie

I was new when this was posted, and it looks like I didn't comment. I want to see July and August photos, too. I love the photos and Nell's watercolors of them. That's how I want my yard to look.

Sue

Sue wrote:
"That's how I want my yard to look. "
-------------------------------------------

And how! Don't we all!

Welcome to Cottage Gardening, Sue!

~ sweetannie4u