Cottage garden plants
Some gardeners favour an informal planting style where the focus is on allowing a mix of flowering shrubs, bulbs, perennials, annuals and climbers to grow naturally in a rustic fashion without strong lines or too much order, rather than the strict colour schemes of carefully manicured herbaceous borders. Cottage garden plants typically include a mix of different flower colours grown in a free-spirited way, allowing plants such as aquilegias and foxgloves to self-seed, naturally dispersing and popping up in random places across the garden, perhaps between paving cracks, to add to the informal vibe. Cottage gardens can also mix in vegetables and fruit bushes and vines into borders and containers, without them having a official designated spot. Some of the best cottage garden plants are phlox, geraniums, aquilegias, dianthus, delphiniums, campanula, honeysuckle plants, lupins, lavender and peonies with a random scattering of flowering bulbs for good measure.