Cottage Style Gardens

A Bee-Friendly Haven for Pollinators

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Cottage style gardens

Cottage style gardens are an increasingly popular garden design style, thanks to their timeless charm, picturesque views and colourful displays. The soft pastel colour pallet of pinks, blues, purple and whites mix together in a haze of floral perfection, making your back garden like a scene from a Monet painting, and evoke calmness and nostalgia.

These delicate flower packed garden styles are not only beautiful, but they also provide an ideal environment for bees and other pollinators. The floral cottage style garden incorporates dozens of flower types that bees and butterflies adore, and the volume of flowers provides vital nectar for pollinators through large parts of the year.

Given the decline of bee species and other pollinators, it’s increasingly important that our own gardens are pollinator-friendly and support local wildlife too.

What Is a Cottage-Style Garden?

So what do we mean when we say a ‘cottage-style garden’? Cottage style gardens are a traditional but informal garden aesthetic. They incorporate a mixture of flowers and plants that blend together in an almost wild and natural way, and bring the aesthetic of a natural flower meadow in their abundance and colour.

Cottage-style gardens are often characterised by their abundant flower beds, with little visible space between the plants so that they flow together. Winding paths around almost overflowing flower beds are typical of cottage style gardens, and they often include climbing plants and flowers as well as cascading flowers to make an immersive and brimming garden.

Why Cottage-Style Gardens Are Ideal for Pollinators

The natural meadow style of planting of a cottage garden mimics natural growing patterns, which encourages more biodiversity and offers a haven for wildlife and pollinators with their abundant food supply and environments to live in. The natural style of the garden as provides more habitats for nesting birds, hedgehogs as well as providing resting points pollinators or nests for hibernating solo bees.

The variety of plants and flowers that cottage style gardens offer, including perennials, annuals, herbs, and shrubs, provides a diverse and year-round food source for bees and other pollinators.

A well designed cottage garden can bloom from early spring to late autumn, and even over the winter period too, which ensures pollinators have a constant supply of nectar, even at cooler times of year.

Cottage style gardens also typically focus on utilising native plant species, as these offer the most benefit to local pollinators and wildlife.

Top Bee-Friendly Plants for Cottage-Style Gardens

These bee-friendly plants thrive in cottage-style gardens, and add to the natural floral cottage style:

Lavender: A classic cottage garden plant known for attracting bees with its fragrant blooms.
Foxgloves – tubular shaped native flowers that are ideal nectar sources for bees.
Alliums – bundles of purple pompom shaped flowers that bees and butterflies love
Forget-me-nots – delicate and pretty, they cascade wonderfully out of pots or over low walls
Sunflowers: Large, open flowers that offer plenty of pollen for bees.
Thyme and Rosemary: Herbs that double as culinary plants and excellent nectar sources.

Include a mix of colors, shapes, and blooming times to ensure pollinators have year-round food.

Design Tips for Creating a Bee-Friendly Cottage Garden

Layered Planting: Use plants of different heights and forms to create a natural, layered look. Tall plants like buddleia or foxgloves provide shelter and height, while low-growing herbs and flowers offer nectar at ground level. The key is to use plants of different heights so there are no gaps in your borders.

Water Sources: Include a shallow birdbath, small pond, or other small water source to provide bees and other wildlife with a place to drink. Ensure the water is easy to access and has a safe landing area at its edge and isn’t too deep.

Avoid Chemicals: Pesticides are harmful to bees and other pollinators and are the number one cause of the decline in pollinators. Try to find natural alternatives pesticides or use a simple mesh netting to protect a plant that is being targeted by pests.

Provide Shelter and Nesting Sites: The densely packed bordered of a flower garden provide wonderful hiding spots and nests for solo bees, keeping the soil undisturbed and not overly manicured by using mulch and leaves creates natural safe nesting spots. You can even add in a bee hotel for solitary bees to hibernate in.

All in all, cottage style gardens can be among the most beneficial garden designs for bees and pollinators, as well as being extremely beautiful and calming spaces to enjoy. You can transform your whole garden into a bee haven, or try out some of the principles mentioned above in just one area of you garden and see if you notice a difference in the amount of pollinators you spot in your garden.

Cottage style gardens are gardens that give back to the environment and give the local bees and butterflies a real boost at a time when we’re seeing many species struggle.

If you would like to know more about caring for the plants in your cottage style garden, check out our plant care guides, or see our garden craft ideas for ways to create your own bee hotel.