The Contemporary Cottage Garden: Climate-Friendly, Mindful Methods for Growing Flowers and Food

Bee balm, gillyflowers, and rocket larkspur are some of the vibrant plants featured in gardener Hubbard’s prudent debut guide to creating an English-style cottage garden. Dating back to the 12th century, the cottage garden is known for its abundant, informal look, featuring a diversity of colorful flowers and vegetables and meandering paths. Hubbard outlines seven steps to creating a cottage garden, including selecting the right plants (she recommends visiting gardens and parks to see what thrives locally) and sketching the layout. She takes into account such challenges as climate change, pollution, and food supply shortages, explaining how cottage gardens contribute to a healthier planet by replacing lawns with meadows that don’t require chemical fertilizers or “gas-guzzling mowers” and are filled with native plants that support biodiversity. Gardeners can also donate the vegetables they grow to their community to address food inequality. Elsewhere, Hubbard offers advice for shoring up one’s cottage garden against extreme weather events, like installing rain barrels to minimize the effects of heavy rainfall. She supports her shrewd guidance with her personal experiences growing up around her grandmother’s cottage garden in England and eventually building her own in Pennsylvania. The result is a definitive resource for cultivating a thriving cottage garden. Photos. (Feb.)