The best cottage garden plants have pretty blooms. They flower for a long time and are often fragrant. And above all, they are plants which grow well in your climate and soil.
But there are no rules in cottage garden style. You can adopt a colour theme as Tim Pilgrim has in this contemporary cottage garden.
Or you can grow a glorious patchwork of different flowers together.
You can plan a cottage garden, but you don’t have to. You can let it evolve, experimenting over time. If you love to buy plants on impulse, then this style is perfect for you.
So this is a list of the best cottage garden plants, with their pros and cons. They all have charming flowers, some are sweetly scented and they’re all perfect for pollinators. That’s not just bees but butterflies, moths and other insects.
These plants grow in a wide range of climates and zones, so you’re likely to have a variety available to you.
Firstly, decide whether you want a low maintenance cottage garden, a romantic ‘cottagecore’ haven or you’re prepared to spend time and effort on creating a classic cottage garden.
What makes a garden a cottage garden?
Cottage garden style is colourful and relaxed. It has informal plantings of flowers, fruit and vegetables. See what is cottage garden style and how to achieve it?
The name derives from the idea that workers in cottages would use plants they could grow cheaply and easily. This can mean choosing native plants. It certainly means using plants that grow easily.
Cottage gardens don’t need defined areas. Whereas English country garden style will have lawns, herbaceous borders and a separate ‘veg patch’, everything can be grown together in a cottage garden.
A cottage garden doesn’t look designed. It evolves slowly, with vintage finds and thrifty hand-me-downs. Paths, pots, troughs, arches and other landscaping elements are recycled or upcycled. See A Rustic Cottage Garden on A Budget , Recycled Garden Ideas from RHS Chelsea and Eco-Friendly Garden Design for ideas.
You could also use natural materials, such as stone or wood, for furniture and hardscaping elements.
Recycled zinc bins and pavers with thrifty vintage garden furniture in Arit Anderson’s peat-free show garden at RHS Hampton Court
What are the most ‘cottagecore’ flowers?
‘Cottagecore’ is a social media term. It stands for a simple, rustic life where you grow your own food, bake your own bread and make home-made clothes. It’s a lifestyle ideal around simplicity, sustainability and biodiversity.
The hashtag #cottagecore on social media is associated with pretty cottages, romantic floral dresses and other picturesque rural elements such as keeping hens or ducks.
All the plants in this post have charming ‘cottagecore’ flowers. But if you want to emphasize the ‘cottagecore’ ethos, combine flowers and veg growing and make sure your garden supports biodiversity.
Find out which plants are native to your area, too, as these will support your local wildlife best.
However, non-native plants can also support biodiversity, especially when weather patterns are unexpected. For example, some non-native plants flower earlier or later than your native plants. This helps pollinators if there is warm weather earlier or later than usual.
So ‘grow native plants’ isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ rule.
Old bricks, a pretty gate and ducks – elements of ‘cottagecore’ style.
Asters (asters & symphyotrichum)
Hardiness varies, but some down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun or partial shade.
Asters are daisy-like flowers in blue, pink, red, white or purple, perfect for the cottage garden look. Botanists have recently re-classified them into several different, unrelated species. But the common name for them all is still asters.
‘Symphyotrichum’ asters are native to many parts of the Americas. Plants with the botanic name of ‘Aster’ are European, UK and Asian natives. There are other species too.
If you want to focus on native plants, look up the asters that are native you where you are. Otherwise, both asters and symphyotrichum are pretty, easy-grow plants that flower for a long period from summer to the first frosts.
They’re a good flower for pollinators at the end of the season when many other flowers are over.
Aster amellus ‘King George’ has pretty blue flowers. It starts flowering in summer and goes on flowering until the first frosts.
Honeysuckle
Hardiness varies, some down to minus 29C/minus 20F. Dappled or partial shade.
A classic cottage garden climbing plant, but do your research before planting one! There are nearly 200 species of honeysuckle. Different varieties are native to north America, northern Europe or Asia.
Some honeysuckle varieties may be invasive where you are, so check the name carefully. Some Asian honeysuckles can be very invasive in parts of the USA and Canada, for example. That means that they will spread too quickly, which will crowd out other plants. This can be damaging to biodiversity.
However, there will be a honeysuckle for where you live.
The honeysuckle fragrance is famous, but not all honeysuckles are scented. Check that too.
And some honeysuckles will grow and grow. Unless you’re happy to prune back several times a year, check the eventual height and size.
Honeysuckle comes in white, cream, yellow or gold. This yellow honeysuckle is native to North America, but grows well in the UK too.
Poppies
The seed of Common Poppies can survive very cold temperatures, such as minus 50C/minus 60F but they need the weather to warm up before they sprout and flower. Full sun or partial shade.
Poppies are famous for popping up when the soil has been disturbed. If you dig a new bed, turning over the soil for the first time for years, you’re likely to get poppies the following summer.
That’s why so many poppies appeared in the fields after World War 1. They germinated where the soil had been turned by tires or dug up in trenches.
There are dozens of different types of poppy, all good for a cottage garden. But the best known is the Common Poppy (Papaver rhoeas), mainly available in scarlet and light purple/pink.
They are particularly loved by pollinators. I often find two or three bees sharing one poppy flower.
Grow Common Poppies from seed. You can either sow them in trays and plant them out or scatter the seed directly on the ground.
Poppies self-seed well. They seem to prefer to self-seed – they want to decide where they will grow! Once you have them in your garden, they will dot themselves around.
The common poppy grows every year from seed. The seed heads look good in winter.
See this post for more self-seeding plants – all 20 are so pretty and perfect for a cottage garden.
Low maintenance perennials for a cottage garden
If you want low maintenance cottage garden plants, then choose shrubs and perennials. They need less work than annuals and bedding plants.
Annuals are plants that grow from seed, flower and die in one year.
Perennials are plants that live in your garden for three years or more. See perennials made simple for advice from Rosy Hardy of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants.
And here are three top long-flowering, easy-care perennials for cottage gardens.
Catmint (Nepeta)
Very hardy – down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun or partial shade.
Drought resistant, deer and slug resistant, easy going, long flowering…this must be one of the easiest plants to grow. It flowers for weeks from mid-summer onwards. If you cut it back when the blooms fade, it will start flowering again. It grows in almost any soil, is loved by pollinators and comes in shades of blue, white or lavender.
Nepeta is often recommended as an easier alternative to lavender. Lavender isn’t difficult to grow. However, nepeta will tolerate wet weather and lavender hates getting its feet wet.
Catmint (nepeta) in the gardens in the famous West Dean Gardens in Sussex.
Globe thistle (Echinops)
Hardy down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun.
Another easy-growing plant which is drought-resistant, deer and slug resistant and with a long season of interest.
The sculptural blue or white globe thistle flowers make this one of the best plants for pollinators. And when the blooms are over, they develop seedheads for the birds.
Once established, globe thistle needs almost no care. Once the birds have enjoyed the seeds, the stems will slowly collapse over winter and can be cleared away easily in spring. New foliage will spring from the base.
Globe thistle (Echinops) is a magnet for pollinators. And the birds will enjoy the seedheads in winter. A cottage garden plant with a long season of interest.
Hardy geraniums
Hardiness varies but some hardy down to minus 29C/minus 20F. Full sun, partial shade and some varieties full shade.
Don’t be confused by the brightly coloured bedding plants labelled ‘geraniums’ for sale in garden centres in summer. Those are called pelargoniums. They won’t survive any freezing weather outside.
But there are nearly 500 different varieties of hardy geranium. Some like full sun, others are perfect woodland ground cover plants. Many are drought resistant once established. Geranium macrorrhizum (Cranesbill) is even good in dry shade and difficult conditions under trees.
They flower for months with blooms in pinks, reds, purple or white. They’re deer and rabbit-resistant.
The only care hardy geraniums need is to be cut back once a year after flowering. Then they will often flower again.
Hardy geraniums, such as ‘Anne Folkard’ can be sprawling plants or you can find low-growing ground cover varieties.
When are cottage gardens high maintenance?
A cottage garden generally has lots of different plants and flowers in it. This may mean that there are lots of different caring schedules – you’ll be pruning, feeding, watering or dead-heading at different times.
Some people enjoy looking after their gardens, so ‘high maintenance’ isn’t always a bad thing. But if you want the cottage garden to be low maintenance, plant perennials, shrubs and trees.
Annuals and vegetables are the high maintenance elements in a cottage garden.
The following cottage gardens plants are delightfully pretty. But they are ‘high maintenance.’ This doesn’t mean they’re ‘difficult to grow’. It means they will need regular attention.
Sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus)
Annuals (grown from seed every year) so can be grown in most temperate climates. Full sun in cooler climates, light shade in warmer places.
Probably the most famous ‘cottage garden plant.’ But also the one that requires the most attention, sadly! The blooms are adorably pretty in colours such as pink , purple, blue or white. The scent is delightful and the fragrance from a vase of sweet peas will fill a room.
You’ll need to train sweet peas up a support, water them, dead-head them constantly and protect them from rodents.
None of these tasks are difficult, but it isn’t a plant that can be left to its own devices. If you want a low maintenance garden, then don’t plant sweet peas.
Everlasting sweet peas are less work and come back every year, but they don’t have the fragrance.
I know so few people who grow sweet peas that I only have a photo of them in a vase. They are the most beautiful, fragrant cottage garden plants, but they do need regular attention.
Lupins
There are some very cold hardy lupins but many lupins you buy in garden centres won’t come back year after year. Full sun.
Some experts suggest treating lupins as an annual or short-lived perennial, although the original cottage garden lupins were both cold hardy and long-lived. But the gorgeous new cultivars are less likely to survive over winter in your garden.
In the UK, the milder winters mean that lupins may survive, but gardeners often report disappointment. They are also prone to slug damage.
They are stunningly beautiful cottage garden staples in blues, yellows, reds, purples or white.
Lupins are classic cottage garden plants. Their spikes add fireworks to any border, but they do need more care than many other border plants.
Tulips
Tulips grow best in areas with cold winters and can survive down to minus 40C/minus 40F. However if you have hot summers and mild winters, then tulips may not grow as well. Full sun or part shade.
Tulips have all the gorgeous drama that makes a cottage garden.
But in many gardens, they don’t come back year after year. And Head Gardener Neil Miller of Hever Castle says that tulips flower best in their first year. Read his advice on growing tulips here.
My garden is full of odd tulips in different sizes and colours. That’s because I planted a group of them in a certain colour scheme, and just one remains. Then I planted a different colour scheme another year. And only one or two of those survived. It looks pretty and cottagey, but if you want a particular effect, it’s best to grow your tulips from new every year.
They’re easy to grow in pots. But they don’t reliably come back in borders. Tulips may get tulip fire after a very wet winter or spring.
These mixed tulips in my lawn are pretty, but they are all different sizes and colours. Tulips don’t come back reliably, so these are the remnants of several planting schemes over the years!
Delphiniums (sometimes called larkspur, although true larkspur is different)
Hardiness varies but some down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun.
Delphinium blooms are vibrant spires in purple, red, blue or white. They are probably the most striking and gorgeous flowers for any cottage or ‘English country’ garden.
But they need looking after. They need feeding, staking and protecting from slugs. They don’t want too much competition. They need enough water, but not too much.
None of this is difficult but you can’t just plant delphiniums and leave them to get on with it. You need to look after them on an almost daily basis.
Any list of cottage garden plants will include delphiniums, such as this blue delphinium at Doddington Place Gardens. They are gorgeous but they are not low maintenance.
Best cottage gardens bulbs & tubers
Daffodils/narcissi
Hardy down to minus 20C/minus 4F. Not suitable for climates with hot summers and mild winters. Full sun or partial shade.
Daffodils, also called narcissi, are probably the easiest bulbs to grow. Many of them will spread and they come back year after year.
Plant them in a lawn for a romantic cottage garden look. But remember that you won’t be able to mow the lawn until six weeks after the flowers have faded.
All bulbs need about six weeks of sun on their leaves in order to make their flowers for next year. So if you mow too soon, you will lose next year’s blooms.
There’s more about growing and choosing daffodils here.
One good place to plant them is under trees and shrubs that lose their leaves in winter. By the time the leaves are back, the daffodil will be almost ready to go dormant again. See where to plant bulbs.
Daffodils are the easiest bulbs to grow. They come back reliably year after year and even spread. These were planted over 30 years ago, so I don’t know their name!
Alliums
Hardiness varies but some down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun or light shade.
Alliums have striking blue, white or purple pom-pom blooms. These add punctuation points to a cottage garden border. In some places, they’ll self-seed easily, popping up in unexpected places. Another very popular flower for pollinators.
Deer, rabbits, squirrels and voles don’t like the taste of onion. Alliums are the decorative side of the onion family, so pests leave them alone. Super easy and very resilient, alliums flower in early summer. The seed heads offer sculptural interest for several months afterwards. The foliage dies away by mid-summer.
Alliums (this is ‘Purple Sensation’) keep their distinctive shapes after the flower colour has gone. So they are a presence in the garden for around three months from early summer.
Alstromerias (also known as alstroemerias)
Hardiness varies, some down to minus 10C/14F. Full sun or light shade.
Easy to grow and long flowering. See alstromeria grower Ben Cross’s advice in how to grow alstromerias for endless flowers. The red and orange blooms are taller – if you want the more delicate shades, they’ll be shorter. Plant in the front of a border.
Alstromerias can spread too vigorously in some areas. If they’re invasive in your area, they grow well in pots.
They are very good flowers for the vase but always twist and pull the stem out. Never cut an alstromeria!
Best cottage garden shrubs
Lavender
Hardiness varies but most ‘English lavender’ hardy down to minus 28C/minus 20F. Full sun.
Lavender loves sunlight. It’s a Mediterranean plant but ‘English lavender’ will grow well in colder climates, as long as they are fairly dry. It’s another pollinator magnet and has magnificent fragrance.
You can get lavender in several shades of blue and purple, and also white.
I had bushes of Lavender ‘Munstead’ in the garden for 15 years. They only needed cutting back once a year, after flowering. Otherwise they were almost maintenance free. I cut my lavender back much harder than many people advise. It keeps it in good shape. See The Absolutely Best Way to Prune Lavender.
My lavender ‘Munstead’. It flowers in summer, after which we cut it into neat mounds.
Roses
Hardiness varies but many hardy down to minus 28C/minus 20F. Full sun, partial shade and a few grow in shade.
Roses are the most famous cottage garden plant of all. You can grow roses round arches, arbours and pergolas. You can grow them in pots. And you can grow them in a mixed border.
Some roses have fragrance and others do not. If the blooms have an open centre, they’re good for pollinators. But the double-flowered ones are less beneficial.
There are more than thirty thousand different varieties of roses. You can find roses for very cold climates and roses for hotter climates. But you’ll get the biggest choice of roses if your winters are no colder than minus 28C/minus 20F and your summers average below 30C/100F.
Roses can be low maintenance or high maintenance, depending on what you want. If you insist on perfect blooms without black spot on the leaf or aphids, then you will have to keep fussing over them.
However, if you accept imperfection, you can enjoy beautiful roses in your garden without too much work. They will need fertilising once or twice a year and will flower best if you deadhead them regularly. See how to grow roses and how to choose roses for an obelisk, arch, fence or pergola.
The archetypal cottage garden flower – roses! Here at the Peter Beales rose garden in Norfolk, there are roses on arbours, arches, fences and obelisks, as well as in borders and climbing up walls. Roses mix well with other cottage garden plants, such as foxgloves.
Hydrangeas
Hardiness varies, generally down to minus 28C/minus 20F. Also some down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Shade or partial shade.
Hydrangeas are easy-going plants that grow well in shade. Some varieties are good for pollinators but the ‘mop head’ varieties (with a round flower) don’t offer pollen or nectar. If you want pollinator-friendly hydrangeas, check the variety before buying.
Hydrangeas flower from mid to late summer. Then their flowers slowly dry on the stem and turn into autumn shades of brown and cream. Some hydrangeas, such as ‘Annabelle’, stay sculptural all through the winter and look magnificent with frost on them. So these plants offer a long season of interest.
See everything you need to know about growing hydrangeas.
Hydrangeas are very easy-care. They need watering in dry summers, but otherwise all they need is to be pruned once a year in spring. Not all hydrangeas are wildlife friendly, but this hydrangea flower is called ‘lace-cap’ and offers benefits to pollinators.
Best cottage garden perennials
Monarda (bee balm)
Hardiness varies, some down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun or partial shade.
Another easy-care, deer resistant plant although it can get some slug and snail damage. Popular with pollinators such as butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. The striking spidery blooms come in brilliant, jewel red, pin or purple and also white.
Monardas won’t like long droughts or boggy conditions.
The unusual spidery flower of monarda (bee balm) attracts bees and hummingbirds.
Verbena bonariensis (tall verbena)
If your winters go below minus 17C/0F, then you’ll need to grow verbena bonariensis as an annual. Full sun.
Butterflies and bees both adore the purple flowers and birds love the seeds. A tall ‘see-through’ plant with slender stems and blooms which last from mid-late summer to the first frosts. Best planted in clumps – you’ll hardly be able to see just one verbena bonariensis.
Verbena bonariensis is generally considered slug-resistant, deer resistant and easy care. You can leave the flowers to turn into winter seed heads for the birds and they look good in frost.
Verbena bonariensis is a short-lived perennial. If you have colder winters, you will probably need to grow it as an annual. A clump of verbena bonariensis creates a mass of see-through stems topped by a cloud of purple.
Sedum/stonecrop (now hylotelephium)
Hardiness varies but some hardy down to minus 40C/minus 40F. Full sun or light shade
Sedum (now hylotelephium) is one of the 10 resilient plants in 10 beautiful but tough perennials which will survive both too wet and too dry summers.
I find Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ to be extra-ordinary resilient. It can get nibbled by slugs. But I picked up a stem that had been nibbled by a slug and put it into a vase. I forgot about it and two months later, I realised it had grown roots. So I planted it in the soil. It’s grown into a proper plant!
And when you look at ‘Autumn Joy’ in bloom, you will see the flowers are crowded with pollinators of lots of different types and sizes, all enjoying the nectar.
Sedum (now hylotelephium) ‘Autumn Joy’ is on the bottom right of this photo. A superbly resilient plant for late summer and autumn/fall. Adored by pollinators.
Best cottage garden annuals & biennials
Annuals grow from seed every year so you don’t always need to know about hardiness.Biennials grow from seed, flower, set seed and die over two years.
Many people plant their annuals from seed in the autumn/fall so that their plants have a head start the following summer. If you’re doing this, you’ll need to check whether you can plant them outside over the winter.
You can also grow the seedlings in a greenhouse or potting shed until spring comes. When temperatures and light levels are low, plants don’t grow much.
Annuals and biennials have lots of flowers and come in a wonderful range of colours. They’re perfect for filling gaps or creating a gorgeous display. But they are more work. You have to sow the seed and/or plant the seedlings. Then you may have to support them, feed, water and deadhead them, then clear them away at the end of summer.
Cosmos
Full sun or partial shade.
One of the prettiest and most popular cottage garden annuals. I find them easy to grow. One warning, however! Don’t give them extra fertilizer!
Most plants flower more if you fertilize them. But cosmos will grow green and bushy, then fail to flower.
Cosmos are available in various shades of pink, yellow and cream, along with white. Perfect cottage garden blooms!
Hollyhocks (can be annual or biennial)
Full sun.
A classic cottage garden flower. It’s tall and vigorous with blooms in white, pink or cream. Hollyhocks can sometimes have a mind of their own. Gardeners have often told me that they’ve struggled to grow hollyhocks. Then suddenly hollyhocks start to spring up on their driveway or in the cracks of pavers.
You can get single flowered hollyhocks and double-flowered ones. Only the single flowered ones benefit pollinators.
They can grow to 6ft/2m tall so may need staking.
A hollyhock in the Abbey Physic Garden in Faversham. The soft colours and frilly flowers make it a beautifully romantic cottage garden plant.
Cleome (Spider flowers)
Full sun or light shade
Cleomes aren’t as well known as cosmos or hollyhocks, but they are striking, pollinator-friendly flowers. They have spidery blooms in deep pink, pale pink or white.
Although cleomes are tall (3ft/1m), they are upright and don’t usually need supports. It doesn’t need fertilizer and can be very drought-resistant. Resistant to most pests and diseases.
Cleomes and salvias in the Savill Garden near Windsor. The cleomes are the taller, spidery flowers. They’re long-lasting and dramatic.
Foxgloves (biennial)
Partial shade
Foxgloves have spires of flowers in white, pink, purple, white or cream in early summer.
They’re toxic to both humans and pets, so if you are worried about either nibbling plants in your garden, then don’t plant them. Most pets know what to nibble though. See how to puppy-proof your garden.
Foxgloves often self-seed easily and need very little attention. If you cut the first big spire of flowers off when it is over, you should be rewarded by a spray of smaller spires.
Foxgloves are another popular cottage garden plant. The spires add spikes of colour in early summer. They are toxic so be careful around children and pets.
Best cottage garden plants for warmer climates
Most of the plants in this post will grow well in warmer climates, but some will not like temperatures that are regularly above 30C/100F or never freeze. If you don’t need a winter coat and spend most of your life in a T shirt instead of a sweater, you probably won’t be able to grow tulips, daffodils, delphiniums or hydrangeas!
However, some popular cottage garden plants grow as perennials in warmer climates and are re-planted annually in cooler climates. Mix them with local native plants as Bill Bampton of The Diggers Club does in Cottage Garden Mash-up – how to adapt English cottage garden style to your own climate.
Salvia
Full sun or partial shade
Salvias come from Mexico and grow well in climates which rarely freeze in winter. They can tolerate hot summers and drought.
However, if you see a salvia growing in the UK, you’ll see lots of bees enjoying the nectar. They’re proof that non-native flowers can be valuable to wildlife.
There are 900 different types of salvia in a very wide range of different colours. There are some vivid pinks and purples, pastel pinks and creams plus bi-coloured salvias.
Read the UK’s top expert on growing salvias here. Those in cooler climates will probably have to replant salvias every year. But they flower for months at a time. See 18 long flowering perennials that bloom from summer until the first frost.
Plants such as rosemary and sage have recently been re-classified as salvias. They are perfect cottage garden herbs.
Salvias are quite tender and if your winters freeze regularly you will either have to lift and store them or plant again from new. But they are amongst the longest-flowering perennials and perfect for a cottage garden.
Best cottage garden trees
Every cottage garden should have a fruit tree! You may want to choose something unusual, such as a quince or a medlar tree. A native fruit tree is always a good choice.
But a simple apple or crab apple tree will give you flowers in spring and fruit in autumn/fall. You can enjoy this or share it with wildlife by leaving it on the tree.
See An Orchard in Your Garden for tips on growing fruit trees in a small garden.
Crab apple trees on either side of a vintage gate. These are Malus hupehensis and birds adore the tiny red fruits at the end of summer.
Pin to remember the best cottage garden plants
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