Post 6: The Cottage Garden Room

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Note: I would like  to share with  you  through  these few words, photographs and hyperlinked websites, a 3 Dimensional  experience as though you were  actually there with  us. Click on any photograph and it should enlarge to  different size ….. at least half screen or size full screen. It will be clearer in detail than the photo on the post. It will be as if you were  really there looking at the actual  scene. You are an arm chair traveller with us.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The cottage garden is a distinct style of garden that uses an informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, the cottage garden depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure. Homely and functional gardens connected to working-class cottages go back several centuries, but their reinvention in stylised versions grew in 1870s England, in reaction to the more structured and rigorously maintained English estate gardens that used formal designs and mass plantings of brilliant greenhouse annuals.

The earliest cottage gardens were more practical than their modern descendants — with an emphasis on vegetables and herbs, along with some fruit trees, perhaps a beehive, and even livestock. Flowers were used to fill any spaces in between. Over time, flowers became more dominant. The traditional cottage garden was usually enclosed, perhaps with a rose-bowered gateway. Flowers common to early cottage gardens included traditional florist’s flowers, such as primroses and violets, along with flowers chosen for household use, such as calendula and various herbs. Others were the old-fashioned roses that bloomed once a year with rich scents, simple flowers like daisies, and flowering herbs. Over time, even large estate gardens had sections they called “cottage gardens”.

Modern-day cottage gardens include countless regional and personal variations of the more traditional English cottage garden, and embrace plant materials, such as ornamental grasses or native plants, that were never seen in the rural gardens of cottagers. Traditional roses, with their full fragrance and lush foliage, continue to be a cottage garden mainstay — along with modern disease-resistant varieties that keep the traditional attributes. Informal climbing plants, whether traditional or modern hybrids, are also a common cottage garden plant. Self-sowing annuals and freely spreading perennials continue to find a place in the modern cottage garden, just as they did in the traditional cottager’s garden.

 

….. The view from the  arbour  where you look down into a small amphitheatre. On the topside of amphitheatre is the cottage garden area. We have only fully put this in July 2015. Before that we were dependent on a weekly supply of sullage water which was limited to once a week for one hour or so. Since September  2015  we have put down a bore to 36 metres and struck abundant water. With a  branching irrigation pipe, bore water can now  be brought to taps on the topside and bottom  side of our house.  Sprinkling can be left on different areas for several hours at a time for minimal cost. Having abundant  water for our garden, has greatly changed how we do gardening ……

….. Since September  2015  we have put down a bore to 36 metres and struck abundant  drinkable water ……

….. Different areas of our cottage garden shown above and below ……

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  Specific  Cottage Garden Plants:

….. Specific  plants  are not named but the photos show the  rich changing colours and

the low growing plants ……

 

 

Gardenia-jasminoides-Radicans

 

Storm Lilies out a the base of  large stone  obtained from the demolishing of the old Cobb and Co. site  in Brisbane = 1866 stone. It was retrieved from the foundations of the old Cobb and Co. Depot in the Stage Coach days of Brisbane from 1866. I obtained two truckloads for $75.00. These stones (I bought two truckloads) were being dumped otherwise.

Harriet has made a garden creation out out of an old board with a wooden lip. Old shovel heads from my past landscape construction days of the late ’80’s and early 90’s, have been used as a feature.

 …. Storm Lilies out the upside of the stone block ….

 …. Storm Lilies closeup ….

Storm Lilies out on Garden and Land: (as from the Land Post)

In December 2018, we had three days of heavy rain. We have many Storm Lilies planted in our garden around the house.  Storm Lilies are a beautiful lily to about 300 mm high and have a sworl of dull green narrow leaves. During dry times of the season, the lilies are  just a sworl of dull green narrow leaves.

They respond very quickly to rain and within two days send up swelling pink flower heads. Within two more days, the swelling pink flower heads burst out as open expanding tubes of pink lily flowers. Suddenly from nowhere, there will be  hundreds of beautiful lily flowers throughout the garden and down our driveway.

When we built the house in 1981, I suddenly found these pink flowered lilies in a clump  under some small  trees coming down our extensive driveway. The lily bulbs are very easy to transplant into another location.

Within about a week of flowering, swelling heads of seeds develop which  then break open to release many flat winged seeds within another week.  These seeds then fall to ground or blown by the wind to more distant areas. This is why Storm Lilies are in small clumps or single lilies out the middle of the lawn.

In December after the rain, there were hundreds of pink lily flowers out every wherein our extensive garden and down our driveway. In the garden, they are everywhere whereas with our extensive driveway, I planted bulbs on either side of the driveway for viewing the flowers after rain.

Flowering can be several times a year after rain. It is wonderful when we come home or visitors come to our house and are greeted by hundreds of beautiful  pink flowered lilies. Our house as a hand-made house vs. machine built house  is a very welcoming house.  We have a huge community of people we relate to.

Pansies in a big clay pot in the  middle  of  winter = June in Australia ….

Sweet Peas as sprouted  seeds had been given to us by a friend in late August 2018. I had planted them out as a line of planted seedlings. At the same time I constructed a frame of wire I had left over from another job.  With my new battery  powered drill, I was able to drill holes in the existing post for screws which I could screwed in with the drill.

Fastening a braced post at the other end, I then had a wire frame over which the sweet peas  could grow as hanging colourful flowers which you would see as you walked up the steps to the house. In mid October 2018, they were still growing to the point they had eye-catching Sweet Pea flowers on the bushes.

 

In mid 2018 I placed this piece of sculpture in the garden made from small logs and cross members.  I have been doing a lot of sculpturing of late. See this post on this website:  Post 12: Birdsnest Sculpturing

In November 2018 there was a council (Logan City) cleanup in our area and people were dumping many items on the side of the road for ue date for the cleanup. My son Anthony was driving by one area in his utility and someone had dumped these metal birds … an orange flamingo  and a blue peacock (see  the post

Agapanthus: (From this website)

The commonly grown agapanthus flower, often called Lily of the Nile, was introduced to Australia from South Africa. There are now more varieties of this genus than ever before, so if you’re like me and summer goes hand in hand with these happy blue sparklers, you’ll be delighted to discover the new varieties are as easy to grow as the common sky-blue form.

The genus name means flower of love, from the Greek agape, meaning love, and anthos, meaning flower. Agapanthus have long, fleshy leaves that form dense clumps of evergreen or deciduous foliage (choose evergreen forms for all-year action). Tall stems tower above, bearing heads of bell-shaped or tubular flowers, in shades of blue, purple or white. In frost-free climates, flowers of evergreen varieties appear over a long season; in cooler zones, summer is the principal flowering season. Agapanthus ranges in height from 20cm for dwarf forms, while giants can be up to two metres.

 

  

 

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Storm Lilies as part of Cottage Gardens:

For months on end, there were numerous storm lilies planted amongst

the low garden plants. They were whorled grey-green straplike 300 mm

long-limped leaves. It had been many months between heavy rain. A big summer

storm came and in a week the whorled grey-green straplike leaves suddenly

became very erect green straplike leaves. A central flower stalk emerged

with a bulbous flower head. In several more weeks the bulbous flower heads

burst open into the pink trumpet-like flowers shown below. In another

couple of weeks, the flower heads formed into rounded seed pods. A month

later, the seed pods split open and released many flat windborne seeds.

These seeds then produce abundant supply of new storm lilies wherever they fall.

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See this website: Images for storm lilies Australia

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Roses in the Garden:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

A rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa, in the family Rosaceae, or the flower it bears.^[1] There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars.^[2] They form a group of plants that can be erect shrubs, climbing, or trailing, with stems that are often armed with sharp prickles.^[3] Flowers vary in size and shape and are usually large and showy, in colours ranging from white through yellows and reds.^[4] Most species are native to Asia, with smaller numbers native to Europe, North America, and northwestern Africa.^[5] Species, cultivars and hybrids are all widely grown for their beauty and often are fragrant. Roses have acquired cultural significance in many societies.^[6] Rose plants range in size from compact, miniature roses, to climbers that can reach seven meters in height.^[7] Different species hybridize easily, and this has been used in the development of the wide range of garden roses.^[8]

 

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Dietes in the Garden:

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See the next post: Post 7: Permaculture Garden Room