It's not yet spring in many parts of the country, but yet our thoughts start turning toward spring gardens and flowering trees, shrubs, and flowers, flowers, flowers. And although cottage gardens seem best suited to country and suburban settings, you can create the same look even in a small urban backyard.
To guide you along, Danish garden celebrity and author Claus Dalby has now published his best-selling book The Cottage Garden (Cool Springs Press, 2023) in English.
Dalby takes you through the history of cottage gardens and some of its most famous practitioners — Britons Gertrude Jekyll, Margery Fish, William Robinson, Vita Sackville West and American Tasha Tudor — but then introduces you to gardens and designers in Denmark, Sweden, the United States, and Germany whose modern take on the classic style will inspire every gardener who reads this book.
With more than 700 photographs, concise descriptions of the cultivars you'll want to try, and ideas galore, the books captures the romance, the wildness, and the casual, unstructured philosophy that is the foundation of cottage gardens.
As designer Linda Vater puts it in the foreword to the book, ""With his own keen eye and expertise in color, plant combinations, and the role of texture and light, Claus helps the reader translate the mysterious cottage garden formula into actionable ideas and insights for gardeners longing to capture the lovely simplicity and lifestyle of cottage gardening."
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