5 Cottage Garden Style Plants That Are Virtually Bulletproof

A cottage garden creates a dreamy, flower-filled setting that inspires creativity and encourages you to slow down and appreciate the little details that make it so beautiful.

A cottage garden, filled with layers of florals and foliage, is something a lot of us dream of. This style of garden creates such a beautiful escape from the outside world, while also providing the gardener with an opportunity to express themselves using different colors, textures, garden structures, and art objects. If you choose the low-maintenance, tough-but-beautiful little plants that I have listed below, it can also be so easy to care for. This spring and summer, I’ve been working away at creating a cottage-style garden in the back corner of our larger garden area. I’ve anchored the space with a beautiful obelisk, and I’m filling in around it with a careful assortment of plants I know and trust to help me create an inspiring little garden that will look beautiful year-round. I thought it would be fun today to talk about some of my favorite cottage-style garden plants that I can always count on to look pretty, and come back every year looking better than ever, no matter what kind of neglect or abuse I put them through.

Another favorite for a beautiful garden this summer: How to Use Epsom Salt for Roses

Tough, Cottage Garden Style Plants That Never Let Me Down

If you feel like you can’t grow anything successfully, and everything you plant seems to die on you, no matter how good your intentions are, try the following plants in your garden for blooms throughout the growing season. These are my tried-and-true favorites that never let me down, no matter what summer brings my way. They put up with drought, neglect, and even a few poorly-timed garden experiments, and they just keep coming back every year looking beautiful, cheerful, and better than ever.

Spring Blooming: Nepeta

Nepeta, otherwise known as catmint, is a sunlight-loving perennial garden favorite with delicate purple flowers that bloom in the early spring. If you cut it back after the flowers have faded, it will bloom again in mid-summer. This plant can be divided easily to make more plants for your flower garden, and it will tolerate drought and neglect without so much as a wilting leaf. These low-to-mid height plants work beautifully when they’re planted along the edging of your garden bed.

Read more about nepeta here: Growing Catmint – Delightful and Well-Behaved

Late-Spring Blooming Plant for Your Cottage Garden: Salvia

Salvia is probably the most sensitive of the flowering landscaping plants that we’re talking about today. If you divide it too late in the season, it will grow crispy, and a stem or two may even die off almost entirely. In this sensitive state, you will see the leaves wither and die quite easily, but if you mulch well and water it regularly, you’ll start to see new growth coming from the base of the plant within a few weeks, even if you were sure that you had killed it completely. By the next spring, the newly divided salvia will have made a full recovery and will reward you with a burst of deep purple blooms that will bring so much to your summer garden.

Favorite grasses for small garden plans: Blue Fescue is the Showy Ornamental Grass Your Perennial Garden is Missing

Early-Summer Blooming: Lavender

Lavender plants are botanical favorites that work wonderfully in perennial gardens or in planters and pots. If you live in a cooler climate, look for English lavender varieties or lavendin (a cross between English lavender and Portuguese lavender), which are hardier and more tolerant of cold winters than French lavender or Spanish lavender. Once your lavender plants are established, usually within a few months after planting, they’ll come back every summer with fragrant, dainty spikes of purple blooms for you to enjoy year after year. Be sure to prune your herb plants back after blooming or in the very early spring to help them keep their shape and avoid developing unsightly woody stems.

More gardening ideas with lavender: Growing Amazing Lavender in Your Garden

Mid-Summer Blooming Cottage Garden Favorite: Liatris

This pollinator-friendly native perennial also goes by the common name “Blazing Star” and when you see it bursting forth with bright purple bloom spikes in July, you’ll understand why butterflies love it. What I love about this flower is that it brings so much color and energy to the garden right at the point in the summer when all my other favourites are starting to fade away or look a little tired. I use it in perennial borders as a mid-height plant between the taller shrubs and the lower mounding plants like hostas.

Learn more about using liatris in your flower bed here: The Secret to Growing the Very Best Blazing Star

Late-Summer Blooming: Panicle Hydrangea

Hydrangeas seem to be everyone’s favorite summer flower, whether they’re the popular Annabelle hydrangea, the classic mophead hydrangea, or the later-blooming panicle hydrangea. Panicle hydrangea shrub plants produce large, cone-shaped blooms that many people associate with the end of summer. Many varieties turn a pinkish hue, red, or green as the season wears on, welcoming the fall with beautiful autumnal color. Not only are they beautiful, showy additions to your garden, but they’re also incredibly easy to grow as a single plant or a hedge, especially compared to other hydrangea varieties. These bushes grow well in USDA hardiness zones 3-9, tolerate a bit more direct sun than other varieties that thrive in a shade garden, don’t mind a little neglect, and seem to get bigger and better every year, even during years when other varieties struggle a bit due to weather or pest issues.

Learn more about growing this style of hydrangea here: How to Plant a Panicle Hydrangea

Do you grow any of these reliable favorites in your garden? What other cottage garden style plants do you find exceptionally easy to grow?