By planting flowering plants of different heights and colours you add texture to the garden. The plants can also be left to their own mechanisms, so there is very little maintenance involved and they will soon spread covering the area with a blaze of growth and colour!

By strict definition cottage gardens are those which belong with a small home or have developed out of that particular tradition. Often they have meandering perennials and creepers scattered throughout the garden.

The plants available in the 'Cottage Plant' section are often low growing or those growing to about one metre in height. They are sometimes grown for their scent (eg. lavendars, heliotropes), or their splashes of colour (eg. salvia, nemesia), or their decorative appeal.

Herbs are often incorporated for either culinary purposes or companion planting particularly in small gardens where space for a vegetable patch is limited. Herbs can be useful as a foliage contrast and often their fragrance is an added benefit.

The whole garden need not be devoted to just cottage plants. You can plant a selection of these flowers in your existing borders, garden beds, pots or in a multitude of containers and design the rest of the garden to anything else.

A rusty old watering can, a large kettle, old wheel barrow or a bucket can planted with flowers spilling out of it can look magnificent. Look around some of the old junk yards, you never know what you might come up with. A touch of paint to the articles can certainly enhance the Cottage Garden.

You can cluster together old terracotta pots filled with cottage garden flowers and have a few pots lying on different angles amongst them empty.