Cottage Gardens

by Geoff Hamilton

The cottage-garden style has been part of British gardening for centuries. The first cottage gardeners had little time, space and money, and designed simple and practical settings for their homes which, in time, developed into more elaborate, and sometimes extravagant, gardens. In this book Geoff Hamilton looks to the superb old cottages of the past and adapts the more popular features to modern gardens. In building three cottage gardens from scratch at his home in Barnsdale, he sets out to simplify the practical problems of creating a natural rustic look and shows how to build new constructions such as arbours and bowers, arches, seats and boundaries to suit readers' budgets. A diverse selection of planting plans emphasizing colour schemes and perfume, with explanations of how to cultivate cottage-style plants, has also been included. Practical advice covers a variety of subjects such as herbaceous plants, roses, perennials and annuals, climbers, bulbs, containers, herbs, vegetables and fruit.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference, Horticulture

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 1995

About the author

Geoffrey Stephen Hamilton (15 August 1936 – 4 August 1996) was an English gardener, broadcaster and author, best known as presenter of BBC television's Gardeners' World in the 1980s and 1990s.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first gardening book I have read cover to cover, and it was worth it. You pick up so much. I'm inspired and will start taking cuttings tomorrow.

[Samantha Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

inspirational

[Luisa Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d give this four and a half stars if I could. Such a lovely, inspiring book. Reading it, I wanted to go straight outside and start digging up my lawn. This will be a book to dip into again and again, as my garden develops. The illustrations are lovely and the information on plants is useful. If it contained more planting schemes and some advice about gardening on a slope, as well as how to deal with ravenous slugs, I’d give it five stars.

[Ruric Amhari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hands on how to cottage garden book split into three sections.

First is a history of cottage gardening illustrated with pictures, reconstructions and photos.

Section two is creating a cottage garden with a couple of plans for an Artisan's Garden and a Gentleman's Garden - complete with how to instructions abot building pergola,s cold frames, versaille planters and layng paving etc. The final part of section two is all about plants for the garden.

The third and final section of the book is about the cotage economy - veg, herbs and fruit.

Lots of photos to illustrate text all the way through.