The new garden aesthetic of the 21st century: Lazy Cottage

It's a thing.

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It’s 2024 and I have decided we are all making our lives harder than they need to be. It’s not sustainable and it’s not very wise. And it’s almost summer. As I write this to you, it is a warm, sun drenched October morning. Not too warm yet, though. A breeze blows through my purple Verbena bonariensis flowers, ruffles the yellow blooms on my mustard greens and sends my ridiculous 3.5m tall hollyhock swaying in the wind.

(I have never grown a hollyhock this tall. It might be the most exciting thing in the garden right now. I did google if it was the tallest hollyhock ever grown. It’s not. The tallest hollyhock on record is over 7m tall!!)

On a day like today, it’s hard to believe that growing a garden could ever be stressful. And yet, and yet. The mercury is inching ever higher, the soil is getting ever drier and in just 34 days it will be upon us: Perth summer. The scorching, sizzling heatwaves, the sun that rises and never seems to set. The sweat that trickles down the back of your neck while you’re out there, desperately hand watering your petunias in the midday haze, hissing at them, like a pink faced lunatic ‘c’mon you bastards, just don’t die’.

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• It’s a guide to growing the only kind of cottage garden that can weather a Perth summer - the Lazy Cottage garden

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I give up on my garden every summer. Or at least, I have historically given up on my garden every summer. And if you live in Perth, I suspect you have - at least once or twice - too. And who can blame us, the conditions we are expected to garden in from December through until late March are, quite frankly, despicable. Hot, sticky, sandy and dry.

But! Knowledge is power. And these days I am happy to report that I don’t give up on our garden and I no longer fall into existential crises about my empty, sandy beds. I’ve become acclimatised to the emotional turmoil that rolls in every December on the sea breeze. I know that gardening is frustrating in summer, so I have come to expect and endure it, rather as one might endure an unpleasant (but ultimately time-limited) bout of gastro. I don’t blame myself and I know that, with the first autumn rains, things will get a bit better.

But that doesn’t help us today, in October. And also back to the ‘making life harder than it needs to be’ thing. We’re all too busy and too perfectionistic and we ask too much of our poor little human selves. And it’s almost Christmas and that’s just going to add another layer of insanity over the whole sweaty thing. So what are we to do? How are we to grow?! How are we to thrive?! When are we going to get a goddamn holiday!!!????

Enter the gardening aesthetic of the 21st century (I just made it up): Lazy Cottage.

The Lazy Cottage garden

The Lazy Cottage garden is a thing because it has to be a thing because everyone I speak to wants a rambling cottage garden but no one has any time or any energy and in some places on the planet you can stick a hydrangea in the earth and it will grow and bloom prolifically but I live in Perth, Western Australia, and Perth is not one of those places. Unless maybe if you live in the hills and are a genius.

I’m not a genius and I’m tired and I have a 21 month old toddler who is BRILLIANT but who also does not really want to ever let me use our garden hose to hand water anything and the only kind of gardening he currently condones is the kind where we look for slugs together, squish snake bean seeds direct into the soil and where I let him eat every single one of our broad beans and blueberries before they are ripe. To be honest all of those activities fill me with pride and joy, but they’re not conducive to keeping up a well maintained cottage garden.

So, I officially give up. Gardening is about having fun and in this new phase of my life I am discovering that that means finding ways to love being outside that don’t necessitate a quarterly application of cow manure to every single bed or a timely sowing of my sweetcorn seeds. Being imperfect. Being lazy. Being a Lazy Cottage gardener.

What makes a garden ✨Lazy Cottage✨? Ok, I think there are a few things. And that is the topic of today’s newsletter. Here’s how to grow a lazy cottage garden.