Kathy and Stuart Pickering created theirs rustic cottage garden on part of the field.
And you can use the same techniques to turn an empty lawn into a haven of color and fragrance, filled with butterflies and birdsong.
Their space is the equivalent of a long, narrow city garden, measuring about 30 feet by 100 feet, but the ideas would work in smaller and larger spaces.
And they did it all on a shoestring budget, recycling used finds and using virtually no hard landscaping.
Kathy and Stuart created this rustic field cottage garden.
Start with a plan
Kathy says she knew what she wanted to do, so she didn’t have to think about it too much.
Cottage gardens are traditionally informal, but it makes sense to think about how you break up the space. There’s relatively little cottage-style hard landscaping, which makes it a good budget choice – Kathy’s seating area uses chipboard instead of paving, the paths are grassy, and the arches are self-made from hazelnut branches.
All the furniture and pots are bought at yard sales, car shows, or passed down by friends.
Cottage garden style – a simple, informal layout that you can put together without spending money on heavy landscaping.
Here you can learn more about the cottage garden style and how to achieve it.
Kathy marked her garden zones with posts and paths. It starts with an open lawn at the beginning.
This is the open lawn at the start of Kathy and Stuart’s garden, with an ‘oval’ for pots and seating. Note that the fence is rustic – with a great view, they didn’t need anything substantial.
Then the heart of the flower garden is a series of four borders on either side of the central path, which descend to another open meadow at the bottom. If your garden is long and narrow, this way of zoning the entire space works very well to make it feel bigger and blur the boundaries.
An arch and gate mark the first area of lawn, followed by a central grass path with borders on either side.
You can find more tips for dividing a long narrow garden here and read this if you have a very small narrow garden.
Kathy hangs dried allium heads on a bow she found discarded in the front garden (she asked the owner and they were happy to take it!)
How to create a garden border from scratch
Kathy created her boundaries in the easiest way. She and Stuart marked the border areas by placing poles and covering the area with cardboard. Cardboard blocks light, preventing grass and weeds from growing. It is then slowly decomposed for about five months to improve the quality of the soil. By this time, the grass and most weeds will have died.
Kathy and Stuart covered the cardboard with very well rotted manure immediately after laying it down. They have horses, so they used a very old pile of manure, which meant Kathy was able to plant the bed just a few weeks later. (If the manure is not sufficiently rotted, it could ‘burn’ the stems of the plant).
Kathy started planting these beds a few weeks later. This is called ‘no digging’ and is a much easier way of creating borders than the traditional method of shoveling lawns, meadows or weeds. You can find out more about No Dig For Flower Gardens here.
Rustic cabin
The garden is a few minutes’ walk away from the actual house, but all gardens feel right when anchored to the building. So Kathy and Stuart built a rustic cabin that Kathy calls her ‘cottage’.
They made the cabin by building an old hay wagon, giving it corrugated iron sides. They recently renovated the corrugated iron roof of their cottage, so they reused the old corrugated iron to make the ‘dacha’. They also insulated and painted the inside.
Kathy frequents car boot shows and yard sales, as well as used car dealerships. She also keeps a watchful eye on the scraps that are thrown away. Spotting a row of Victorian glass windows and doors that had apparently been discarded in the front garden, she asked the owner if they were being thrown out. ‘We’ve been waiting for someone like you,’ said the owners, happy to know their windows and doors would have another use elsewhere.
It’s important to ask, even if it’s clear that something is being thrown or skipped.
The cabin was raised, so they made a veranda with stairs. In front of the veranda, they have placed planters made of old boxes, and down the garden there is a beautiful view of the tops of the flowers.
A rustic garden shed made from an old wagon and covered with recycled corrugated iron. The doors and windows come from a Victorian house.
Top garden plants
There are three ways to get very cheap or free plants. You can propagate plants, sow from seed, or share plants with friends when you divide overgrown clumps of perennials.
You can also pick plants that self-seed or spread easily, so your garden fills up without having to buy too much.
But as Kathy says, in a cottage garden it doesn’t really matter what plants you have. You can see what it likes to grow in your garden and grow more of it. And if you haven’t spent too much money, it matters less if the plant doesn’t survive.
The main thing to check is whether the plant likes full sun, partial shade or full shade.
Many cottage gardeners don’t bother with a color scheme, but Kathy assigned a white theme for the first few borders (‘except for a few volunteers in other colors that pop up’). The center edges are blue and purple, and then the last edges are more colorful.
Favorite white flowers, like white valerian, echinacea and hydrangea in Kathy’s white borders.
Verbena is one of Cathy’s favorite garden plants and is interspersed here with Agastache black snake, kale and tomatoes. Cottage gardens mix vegetables and flowers in the same framework.
The last pair of borders is more colorful with sedge, echinacea, herbs and pine – all superb garden plants.
Rustic garden arches for the cottage
A grass path runs through the center of the garden, with rustic arches placed at intervals. Kathy and Stuart made them themselves from hazelnuts. ‘Don’t use willow,’ says Kathy. ‘You take root too easily.’
They drove the hazel poles quite deep into the ground, then bent them and secured them with strong ties.
These bows are made from hazel, which is less likely to root and grow than willow.
Upgrading and frugality – the key to the cottage garden style
Rustic garden cottage style is not about buying things. It’s about using what you have or finding something that no one else wants.
One of Kathy’s most innovative upcycling projects was turning an old couch into a beautiful, rusted trellis for the side of a shed. It was a sprung couch seat, so all she had to do was separate it from the frame, remove the padding and fabric, and she had a metal frame to hang on the wall.
A repurposed sofa seat turned into a garden trellis.
Kathy saw this bow (separate from the gate) lying apparently discarded. She checked with the owners who were happy to take it to her. She already had chicken wire on it, and Kathy is tying dried heads of allium to it. They almost look like metal ornaments.
Kathy uses old buckets and planter buckets, along with flower pots given to her by friends. ‘If anyone thinks a pot is too shabby for their garden, they know I’ll always use it,’ she says.
Check out this post for more tips on recycling, thrifting and recycling in the garden.
See more of Kathy’s rustic cottage garden in the video!
Walk through Kathy’s rustic cottage garden in this video.
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