Does anyone include daylilies in their cottage gardens or am I the only one who considers them "appropriate" (for lack of a better word...) ?
Daylilies seem to be either a "love them" or "hate them" type of plant (from what I can gather, anyway...) and (from what I've observed) not many people incorporate them into cottagey settings.

I started using them because asiatics and oriental lilies FRY in the summer heat here, so to get a "lily effect" I got into dl's and they do very well and bloom for a much longer period of time.

I suppose my question is "Are dl's 'against the rules' of cottage gardens?"

As an example:

Absolutely not, Mike- Daylilies are perfectly at home in the cottage garden setting! While I don't put them at the top of my list of favorites, and never really considered myself a Daylily enthusiast, I started looking around the garden and realized I've got about 100 varieties out there! In the ever growing Daylily world, that's not really that many, but I definitely consider them a mainstay in the garden. Not only are they unbeatable easy to grow summer color, I also find their fountains of foliage lovely among the other textures and shapes in the cottage garden.

How gorgeous those Canterbury bells are with the Daylilies!

Certainly they are allowed. I admit that most of our dl are down the side of the driveway. However a few reds are mixed in where I am trying to create a 'hot' border. It's very slow work in the shade.

Lucy, finding hot colors for shade is indeed a challenge! The area where I use fiery salsa colors is in partial shade, and it didn't occur to me at the time how few plants there are in those colors that grow well in shade. A couple of trees came down over the winter in that area, so I think conditions will be greatly improved this year. What kinds of plants are you using (besides Daylilies) for hot colors in the shade?

Thanks, Neal. The mix of the canterbury bells and the dl was a complete accident, but a nice surprise ! The CB just came up by itself from ones I had previously had in there a few years prior.

The nurseries around here that favor the cottage look never carry dl's...and the gardens I've seen rarely, if ever have a single dl in them. IMO they work just fine, as your pictures prove !

Lucy: I like "hot colors" too ! Especially in summer.

The cottage look is hard to achieve where I am because our summers are very hot and a lot of those flowers just melt in the heat. Spring is not a problem, but the minute the summer heat starts, forget it ! (sigh)

Hybrid Delphiniums do well here...in spring. I treat them as annuals because they never "come back" after a hot summer.

Do either of you ever grow Agrostemma ? It's a GREAT plant for cottage gardens. Love it. I'm also way big on Catananche.

I have a red astilbe 'Fanal' that looked good the 2nd year. I tried coleus, but was not satified with it. It is really partial shade, but the only place I could use. There is a red stemed, pinkish flowered astilbe I might use. I could throw in some orange, perhaps. I was looking at an ad for 'cardinal flower' which seems to be listed as taking shade pretty well. bought my husband a garden fork for christmas as he had broken the handle on his old onw. A lot of digging & compost spreading should be done.

Good idea about the Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis). I forgot all about those. I used to have them in shade and they did very well and provided a nice red color.
How about the upright fuchsia "Voodoo" ? Deep purple and red. Where you are, you might have to use it in a container and bring it in for the cold season.

Will Clivia grow where you are ?

Mike, I know what you mean about heat knocking out so many of those traditional English cottage garden favorites, our summers are so hot and humid, Delphiniums and Lupines just aren't an option here Your Mediterranean climate offers its own specific challenges too. I've never tried growing Agrostemma, but have looked longingly at them in seed catalogs. I have it in my head that I read somewhere that our summer humidity wouldn't agree with them.

I love looking at pics of the gardens at Annie's Annuals, she has created such a beautiful cottagy look with non traditional plants. Have you been there?

Lucy, I love Astilbes, and grew them to perfection at my last home that was situated in the woods. We were in a "holler", as they're called around here, with a creek running though the front yard, and the soil was a deep, organic, moist, sandy loam. The Astilbes got so big! Now that I'm in a sunnier, more exposed area on a hill top, I find it difficult to keep them as moist as they'd prefer. My salsa bed here has had the challenge of competition from tree roots and dryness, although I think that may improve this year with the Bradford pear being gone. Cardinal Lobelia is a great choice, if Astilbes are happy they would do well too, but my bed is a bit too dry for them as well.

Mike, Clivia aren't winter hardy enough for me or Lucy to grow in ground, but they are gorgeous! I've got an orange and a yellow one in pots that are budding now.

Cliva is a houseplant here. I don't think that I will do anything that has to be moved in & out of the house. I will be 76 this month & outside plants are for the outdoors & indoor polants no longer go out.

Clivia do well here, but only bloom for about a month and then that's it. Fuchsias on the other hand, thrive here.

We all seem to have a "problem area" no matter where we live ! Right ?

Annie's Annuals is about 8 hours north of me, so I've never been there. One of these days I'll make it up there. The only good cottage nursery we had here closed recently. They carried a lot of Annie's plants but they were defintely "pricey" to say the least.

Traditional cottage garden plants USED to be easy to get here. That's before the big box stores came along and started selling the dwarf varieties of everything. It's terrible.
Back in the day, when I worked at nurseries, annuals came in wooden flats and you bought them by the dozen or half dozen. NOTHING had blooms on them so you had to know what you were buying...unlike now where everything is already blooming in 6 packs and the selection is abysmal.

Giant stock, love in a mist, tall rocket snapdragons, agrostemma and a myriad of other good old fashioned flowers were commonplace back then. Before the term "cottage garden" became the buzz word, we used to call them "old lady gardens"...because old ladies always had the best gardens with the best variety and style. We need more old ladies !!!

Hi everyone. We're enjoying the return of some of our flying friends, especially the robins but it's still looking drab and dreary outside so I'm looking at pictures - thought I'd share a few today. These were taken last season, in my gardens.




I can't wait until things start growing and filling up the bare spaces again!

Mike, I've always called the old fashioned flowers "Mamaw plants" or "Meemaw plants" (popular southern terms for grandma). I think having a soft spot for nostalgia is a big reason many of us love the cottage garden style. The lack of selection at nurseries is bothersome! I guess most folks they market to don't like to stake anything? The flowers you listed are grown in your area as cut flowers, you'd think they'd be available to the gardening public. Have you ever tried wintersowing? I think it would be a good and easy way to start those flowers from seed.

Chelle, such beautiful pics! I find myself looking longingly at last years garden pics at the end of winter too. You've combined your colors and textures very nicely!

Thanks, Neal.

As I looked at these again today I was struck again by how lackluster and bland much of the foliage would appear without the lamb's ears. I've heard that a lot of folks don't care for it's vigorous nature, but I wouldn't want to be without it. It makes a wonderful living mulch. I just clip them all down in the Spring, and plant in between them. And they smell so good! The scent of the bruised or cut leaves and stems reminds me of raspberries, or raspberry lemonade.

Chelle: Your gardens are beautiful ! I like lambs ears, too. It makes a great contrast like you said. What are the "iris-looking" plants in the top 2 pictures? And, the red flowers...monarda ???

Neal: I do winter-sow a few things, like sweet peas, calendulas, salpiglosus (sp?) but I don't have room for much more than starting them in 6 packs. My garden is miniscule...it's only 2500 sq. ft. but it's packed to the gills...can you say OCD ?

You're right: They do grow a lot of things here for cut flowers...larkspur, delphinium, ranunculus, statice, gypsophila, cornflowers, stock, etc. A friend of mine and her husband have a florist shop and I went with them to the flower market a few times. Supposedly a huge amount of cut roses are grown nowdays in Ecuador. Who knew?

Another old fashioned flower which is virtually impossible to fine here anymore are the fragrant standard carnations and the spicey smelling "rambling" ones. We had these amazingly fragrant trailing carnations in our yard when we were kids...and I've never seen them since.

Mike,

The sword-shaped plants are crocosmia (or montbretia). I have all red so far, but I'l lbe adding some yellow ones this spring.


Great hummingbird plants!

Of course: Crocosmia ! That one looks like the cultivar "Lucifer". I have it and love it. I've got yellow ones, too.

forgot to post a picture of the yellow crocs.

Beautiful!

In which month does yours usually bloom? Ours here bloom pretty late, but at least these haven't frozen out yet. That is Lucifer - good guess. I also have Emberglow.

Are yours (in above photo) Walburton yellow, by any chance? Those are what I have ordered.

Mike, I remember while working in the campus greenhouse in college that cut Carnations sometimes had a little growth tip coming off the main stem, and we would root them easily. That may be a good way to get some of those going in your garden. I see those little sprouts more often on miniature carnations, and I've noticed those are more often fragrant than the larger ones too.

Most of the cut Roses sold in this country do come from Ecuador these days, and a lot of other cut flowers too. I prefer working with the Roses grown in California though (for weddings)- they have a garden rose quality that I like.

I LOVE Crocosmia! As in Chelle's pics, I think the foliage is a gorgeous structural accent even when they're not blooming. I only have 'Lucifer' now, but those yellow ones and some of the others I've seen in catalogs have me wanting more.