What is a *Spanish* cottage garden?
...And why do you need one in your life?
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It’s a list of my favourite SPANISH plants that will work - and thrive - in an Australian cottage garden. Southern Spain’s climate is very similar to ours, and these 11 plants will all tolerate our hot, dry summers (and they’ll fit beautifully with your other cottage garden plants).
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Ok. So. As far as I know there’s no such thing as a Spanish cottage garden.
I just made it up.
But that’s because there really, really should be! And if you live in a place like Perth, with blisteringly hot summers, baked earth, mild winters and winds that whip your face harder than a slighted lover, this is a style of gardening you need to embrace, now.
Here’s the honest truth - I don’t think anyone really knows what they mean when they talk about cottage gardens these days anyway. Are they referring to the traditional, original cottage garden (a ramshackle mix of edible and medicinal plants that the English working class green in their backyards), or to the formalised idea of the cottage garden (which was created by the Jane Austin wealthy types who wanted their gardens to look more relaxed and down to earth)? Or are they thinking of the modern, loose and wild styles of gardening that have emerged at the hands of people like Piet Oudolf, with his swaying grasses and perennials, or Monty Don who fills his patch with any and everything that blooms?
According to Wikipedia (which I still use to answer my questions instead of chat GPT ‘cos I’m old school and find chatGPT’s long-winded, thorough and polite answers really off-putting), cottage gardens have a few key characteristics:
They are informal
They have relaxed, dense plantings
They are full of flowers
They combine edibles and ornamentals
You know what I reckon? I reckon everyone who says they want a cottage garden is really saying they just absolutely don’t want a garden like this:
Well good. Me neither.
Now that’s settled, let’s luxuriate in the fact that there are a million sources of inspiration we can take from around the world to grow ourselves beautiful, loose, wild, flower- and veggie-filled spaces. And today, this inspiration is coming from Spain.
Why am I suddenly preoccupied with Spanish gardens? Because I’ve just discovered Monty Don’s tour of Spanish gardens online (you can watch it here) and writing a newsletter about it is my way of justifying binge-watching the entire series in the name of research.
And also because, if you live in Perth, this is EXACTLY the kind of garden inspiration you need. Our climate is very much like Spain’s (possibly soon to be even drier), and instead of getting down on the fact that our hot dry summers kill all our hydrangeas, it’s much better and more rewarding to grow plants that actually like what we have to offer them.
And you can do all this and still grow a cottage garden. The typical Spanish garden is filled with plants that don’t exactly scream cottage - bougainvilleas, oleanders, olives, hibiscus, mandevillas, lantanas, canna lilies and agaves, to name a few. These plants all do very well in Perth too, and they can look totally beautiful in our gardens (I grow a lot of them myself). But if you want a cottage style garden, there are a tonne of other, less stereotypically Spanish and much more cottage-y plants to choose from. After all, they have cottages in Spain, you know. They’re called casitas!
So, here is a quick run down of eleven of the best cottage-y plants that Spain, and some of its closest neighbours, have to offer, that will add strength, rugged beauty and longevity to your Australian garden.
Even in February.
Eleven Spanish plants for an Australian cottage garden
Alliums
There are a range of wild garlics and onions that are native to Spain and the surrounding Mediterranean regions. These tough plants produce ball-shaped flowers on tall stems that look gorgeous bobbing around above the rest of your plants. If you live in Perth and have previously tried to add interesting alliums to your garden, you might have wound up frustrated - many online bulb vendors can’t ship alliums into WA because of our quarantine laws. Well, I have good news…
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