The Return of the Cottage Garden : Centuries-Old Flowers Come Back in Style
Filled with hollyhocks, wallflowers, pinks, bachelor buttons, cup-and-saucers and forget-me-nots, the cottage gardens of yesteryear were “immune to the fashion in flowers,” as W. George Waters, the British-born editor of Pacific Horticulture, puts it. Their owners planting anything that came their way, these front-yard gardens “contained no pretense whatever.” But when the gardeners came across something special, Waters says, “they tended to pass it around a bit.” This is how these now so-called old-fashioned flowers--some of which have fallen out of favor in California gardens, though they were once popular here--survived the centuries. As for the cottage garden’s legendary profusion of flowers, the tenders of these humble plots, being farm folk, had a good deal of manure available.
Today, you see cottage-garden flowers in children’s storybooks more often than you see them in front of people’s homes, but a quick survey of Southern California nurseries this spring did turn up quite a few, in what I perceive to be a renaissance. It might mean visiting more than one nursery, but if you’d like to try making your own cottage garden, full of innocent exuberance and simple pleasures, the makings are now at hand.
Hollyhocks are perhaps the definitive cottage-garden flower; certainly they are the tallest and most picturesque. There’s no denying the simple pleasure of growing a flower taller than you are. One of the oldest of the cultivated garden flowers, hollyhocks were taken to England from the Near East by returning crusaders.
The hollyhocks pictured here, grown in the Laguna Beach garden of Hortense Miller, were started from seed collected from a seemingly wild plant found in an alleyway in an old part of town. In Southern California, hollyhocks are extremely susceptible to rust, a plant disease that looks just like its namesake, and rust can completely defoliate a hollyhock before it has finished flowering. Yet there is not a spot of rust to be seen on Miller’s plants; they apparently have built up a resistance somewhere along the way. Hollyhocks are sold at nurseries as small plants, and seeds (from which they grow very quickly) are available at nurseries and through catalogues, but it might be wisest to seek seeds from plants that someone else is growing.
The deep-purple iris that grows on so many hillsides in the older parts of Los Angeles is another cottage-garden flower that doesn’t seem to mind being neglected. No one knows what type of iris it is or where it came from, but it does have ancient origins. A completely unpretentious iris, it blooms three times a year (by my reckoning, once in the dead of winter, once in late spring and once in the fall), putting to shame most modern irises. With some searching, you might turn up a white version (the two make a delightful pair) as well as a lighter purple.
Cup-and-saucer, a Campanula , is a storybook flower that children notice every time because its bright blue or lavender flowers look like cups sitting on tiny saucers. Described by one English author as having long been a quaint inhabitant of cottage-garden borders, its shape is supposedly spire-like, but I have never succeeded in getting one to stand upright; be prepared to stake them or give them room to rest. Finding cup-and-saucers might take some searching from nursery to nursery, so keep in mind that you can also grow them from seed.
Another blue flower of ancient history is the forget-me-not, “worn by Henry of Lancaster, later to become Henry IV, believing that whosoever would wear it, would never be forgotten,” according to Roy Gender in his encyclopedic “The Cottage Garden.” Its botanical name, Myosotis , which means “mouse ears,” refers to the small, fuzzy foliage. Forget-me-nots grow well in somewhat shady areas but not in deep shade. They require lots of moisture in Southern California.
Bachelor buttons--which may be blue, white or pink--grew wild in the farmers’ fields; hence its other common name, cornflower. At one time it was known as Hurtsick, “because it hindereth the reapers by dulling their sicles in the reaping of corn,” according to Gerard, the 16th-Century herbalist. Unfortunately, the “improved” plants sold today tend to form dense, ungainly heads of flowers; the unimproved kinds are much more graceful plants, if less floriferous. You might find an older variety growing in a seed-saver’s garden, or let your own go to seed and save them. Some gardeners believe that bachelor buttons grow better if they’re planted in the fall, but more small plants are available in the nurseries now, for spring planting.
Love-in-a-mist ( Nigella ), with dainty petals partly hidden in a filigree of fine greenery, dates to Elizabethan times. It was brought from the Near East, not for its lovely, unusual flowers, but for its seeds, which were used in various concoctions, including a “remedy” for freckles. An annual, it’s easy to grow. The flowers can be cut and dried.
Honesty, so named because the seeds show clearly through the transparent pods (which can be cut and dried), dates back to at least Tudor times; it’s available in most seed racks as Lunaria biennis. Like cup-and-saucer, hollyhock and forget-me-not, it’s technically a biennial, which means it grows one year and blooms the next. In Southern
California, though, all these plants tend to behave like annuals and bloom immediately.
Thrift, once aptly called Ladies’ Cushion because of its dense grass-like tufts of foliage, was used for edging knot gardens. Several types are now available, all with little, pink, pompon-like flowers atop wispy stems. It is a perennial and easy to grow.
Also undergoing a revival at nurseries are three plants that were quite popular in the Victorian era: arabis, aubrieta and wallflowers. Arabis and aubrieta, classic edgings for cottage-garden paths, are originally from the Mediterranean, though they arrived in the British Isles a long time ago. Both are called rock cress and were two of the first plants grown in rock gardens. Arabis has a profusion of small pinkish-mauve flowers on gray foliage (the whole package being a little more than six inches tall). Aubrieta is most commonly found in its near-blue form.
The wallflower is a cottage-garden plant still seen in nearly every English garden. They’re so common in Great Britain that they could be called the English marigold. Here, though, they are shy bloomers. Southern California gardeners who have had success coaxing them to bloom recommend a little shade and lots of moisture and time. But their dainty ways, delightful fragrance and rich colors make the effort worthwhile.
There is one wallflower, Cheiranthus ‘Bowles Mauve,’ that has no trouble growing here; it’s even planted in the drought-resistant garden surrounding the old Lummis House in the Arroyo Seco. It has made a sudden appearance at nurseries this spring.
And the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley is selling a native California wallflower, Erysimum concinnum , a short-lived perennial with a powerful but soft fragrance and creamy-white flowers.
These are only a few of the old-fashioned flowers you can find now. In addition, all of the following were grown in cottage gardens, all are of great lineage, and all are good candidates for a Southern California cottage garden: primroses (called of old, cowslips or oxlips); yarrows (Turner, another 16th-Century herbalist, said, “the flowers make one sneeze exceedingly”); borage (from the Celtic borrach , meaning “to have courage”); foxgloves (or “finger-flower,” the origin of the botanical name Digitalis ); violets; lavender; stock; four o’clocks; Oriental poppies (a new strain, Minicaps, which supposedly thrives in Southern California will be offered at the annual Huntington Plant Sale next month); scabiosa, or pincushion flower; thyme and thalictrum; bleeding heart (not long-lived here, but there’s a native species that’s tougher); scarlet campion ( Lychnis chalcedonica ), with the most flagrant magenta blooms imaginable; day lilies (from Shakespeare’s time); the “daeyeseage” of Chaucer ( Bellis perennis ), the double English daisy; Pinkes and sweet William (the perennial and annual dianthus, respectively), and Leopard’s-bane ( Doronicum ).
For a look at many of these flowers, visit the new Shakespeare Garden at the Huntington in San Marino. Many of the plants will be offered at the Huntington Plant Sale, on May 17. For an invitation (there are a limited number), send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Plant Sale, Botanical Department, The Huntington Library, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, Calif. 91108.
