Cottage Garden  -  this section "English Cottage Garden", is my current garden on a hill overlooking Oxford. We moved here in 2004 and will be building a set of pages by month and possibly by topic.

The gardens are quite small but there are three, a lower garden surrounded by a low stone wall and hedges that faces west, a very small north facing front garden and an east facing top garden. There is also a small patio area with a few narrow borders. All in all there are lots of nooks and crannies. Below I have a few pictures to help with general orientation. The biggest garden, the lower garden did not originally belong to the 300 year old stone cottage, but was bought from the Chapel next door. Much of the garden has stone walling, about six feet high in places and lower elsewhere and is on several different levels as the village is on a hill.

 The soil is likely to be alkaline (I've yet to test it but most of the area is on limestone) so no rhododendrons. It's also fairly windy at times. Temperature wise, it's roughly equivalent to US Zone 8.

Garden in November

Garden in December

Garden in January

Garden in February

Click on thumbnails for full size image.

The lower garden, looking from the greenhouse to the road, with apple tree in fruit.	Looking from the apple tree back to the greenhouse and neighbours house.	This shows how small the front garden gets!	The other side of the front garden, with grass and a few small plants, artemisia, lavenders, helianthum	Narrow passageway leading to top garden. Rosemary, and Teucrium fruticans, this is often a wind tunnel in the winter!	Top of top garden, dry, shady and a bit of a challenge	Looking from the very top of the garden down. New border with magnolias just planted.
West facing patio with rose, fushia and potted plants