Best state for an English cottage garden?
zone8heather
16 years ago
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Irma_StPete
16 years agogymnast_gal
16 years agoRelated Discussions
English Garden
Comments (42)Before you get into a discussion on follies, don't you have to define what you are talking about? There aren't going to be any English follies in America because of Ink's point of what does 'English' mean outside of England? If you want to talk about American style follies, there is Opus 40 for starters. Nelson Rockefeller's outdoor sculpture collection at Kykuit may also be in the running at this point in time. But there is a lot that is fairly eccentric about Kykuit. The Mayan statues on Cruger Island would definitely be worth talking about if the Met hadn't hauled them off a century ago. Bannerman Island probably also counts now. Though it didn't start out as a picturesque ruin but only got that way after it blew up. and that's just around here. Do corn mazes count? How about the Chihuly glass exhibition that was touring botanical gardens for a while. To my mind, that defies description. What I was always told about the survival of English Victorian gardens was that the money hadn't been there in the 1920's to redo them to modern tastes. Then the money really wasn't there in the 1930's, the 1940' brought their own problems, and by the time the 1950's rolled around, the gardens were old enough to have historic value....See MoreBest old-fashioned roses for cottage garden?
Comments (28)Taoseeker- I am thinking about trying a Yolande d'Aragon hybrid perpetual. Other people in the area have had good success with this rose, even with the cold winters. I'd love to try a Jacques Cartier, but I want to check at Northland Rosarium to see if it's recommended for our zone. Mariannese- Wow! You have 36 Gallicas? Do you have any pics of your garden? I'd love to see them. I would like to try a Charles de Mills, which is supposed to be pretty cold hardy and maybe a Tuscany and Apothecary rose. Isabelle- I showed my husband the picture of your grape arbor and table and chairs. I have wanted to do something similar in our back yard, maybe with my antique bricks underneath. He likes the bricks, but didn't really know what I wanted. After seeing your picture, he thinks it would be a great idea! Yea! and thanks :)...See MoreIdyllic town for growing an English cottage garden
Comments (11)Make sure you visit places before you decide -- we are beginning the process of moving back to Vermont after years in California and Arizona. We miss the seasons, the culture, the history, the greenery, etc. All the websites pointed us to the PNW, and it was the "logical" choice; we even have a number of friends in Portland (Oregon -- the "other" Portland!) and Seattle. But despite a half-dozen trips to various areas there, it never felt quite right. Then this past summer we came back to New England and it fit like an old glove! So wherever you go, it has to feel "right" if you're going to make it work. In New England / the Northeast, I'd think you'd do well in any of the smaller towns in an arc from the Delaware Gap in PA/NJ, up through the lower Hudson Valley to NW Connecticut. A little milder than VT/NH/ME, but still 4 seasons, good rain, etc. For that matter western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley in VA are also good bets, but they get a bit hot & humid in the summer (I speak from experience -- can you guess that we're also a bit peripatetic!?) In the PNW, check out Hood River OR, Bellingham WA, and Port Townsend WA. All great towns with recreation, diversity, etc. Also Bend OR. Portland OR is also pretty nice, in a funky kind of way. When we visited last summer I was stunned at the flowers everywhere, especially roses. Where most cities have ivy or weeds along their freeway embankments, in Portland it's solid roses! Amazing to see. And of course the rose test garden in Portland is a treat in itself. If you've never lived on the west coast, the thing to watch out for is the "marine layer", a.k.a. June gloom, a.k.a. overcast skies. We lived in Santa Monica for 18 months, just 10 blocks from the beach -- and I hated it! It was overcast 8 days out of 10. But just 1 or 2 miles inland, it would be sunny (and 10 degrees warmer). Of course the PNW is even more prone to overcast than SoCal... though of course that said, during the summer months it's sunny and beautiful most of the time, *if* you're inland....See MoreEnglish cottage?
Comments (9)I travel to England every year and have stayed in some off-the-charts charming cottages. Probably the very best was called Sticky End Cottage (next to Honeypot Cottage!), where there was absolutely no detail left undone. It was a centuries-old thatch, brimming with the most wonderful antiques. I've linked to the site below, where the photos unfortunately don't even begin to do justice to what it was really like to be there. (I hope my links work - I seem to be having some accessibility problems with certain sites at the moment.) There are, of course, a number of different ways to interpret English cottage style. The more traditional, cluttered look still exists, but there is a trend (particularly in holiday cottages) towards taking an old fisherman's cottage (for example), with its tiny and often quirky spaces, low ceilings and narrow staircases, and refurbishing with high quality but simple elements. Soft and sweet colors (think Cath Kidston, Emma Bridgewater, Laura Ashley) are often used, and the overall effect is, in my eyes, extremely charming. Here's a kitchen done along those lines: And then there are spaces like this, where the old and the imperfect seem to be embraced, that make me long to be back in England again... Here is a link that might be useful: Sticky End...See Moreartqueen-2007
16 years agozaphod42
13 years agobotann
13 years agoRosefolly
5 years agolast modified: 5 years ago
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