Garden type: woodland, meadow, or rock?

What kind of garden works best with your cottage landscape?

by Lorraine Johnson

You’ve got four broad choices of naturalistic cottage garden: woodland for shade, woodland edge for part shade/part sun, meadow for sun, and rocky pockets, in sun or shade. Within these broad categories, of course, there are endless variations: deep-shade woodland gardens under dense evergreens, for example; dry, sandy woodland-edge gardens under sparsely scattered white pines; wet meadow gardens in moist sunny areas; and dry meadow gardens in very sandy soil. To give you a taste of the glorious variety of colour, height, foliage, and bloom you can combine in a native-species cottage garden, we’ve provided starter lists of plants for meadow, woodland, and rock gardens, though many can cope in more than one set of conditions (for example, trout lily and showy tick trefoil can grow in loam, clay, or sand). Whatever garden type your cottage environment ultimately dictates, remember to start small. “Just take a little corner of your property and see what you can do with that comfortably,” says Bill Dickinson, chair of the Natural Heritage Committee of the Muskoka Heritage Foundation. “If you have a lawn, for example, create little island beds of naturalized plants in it, and let them spread.”

As you plan your garden layout, keep in mind the following considerations:

• Purple coneflower

  Before finalizing your design, decide where paths should go, and which path materials would best enhance the native-species theme. Janet Davis, a cottager on Lake Muskoka, near Bala, Ont., for example, chose woodchips for her path because they are “soft, easy on the eyes, and much more sympathetic to the surroundings.” Of course, the more absorbent materials, such as woodchips, pea gravel or, landscaper Robert Allen’s favourite, composted pine mulch, have the important advantage of soaking up precious rainfall and tainted cottage runoff that would otherwise roll off hard surfaces and head to the lake.
• Arrange mossy rocks and fallen logs from your property around the plants. If you dig down a couple of inches and let them settle into the earth, they’ll look like nature put them there. As well as adding visual interest and easing grade changes, they provide great habitat for beneficial insects. If you’re short on your own rocks and decide to import a few, make sure they fit with the local look – nothing is more jarring than limestone boulders plunked down on Canadian shield!
• When planning where to situate your beds, consider the views you most enjoy at the cottage – sightlines from the porch or dock, for example – and give extra attention to their design, since you’ll be seeing them a lot. Likewise, something you’d like to screen out of view, such as an unsightly addition to a neighbour’s cottage, might call for a strategic hedge planting.
• Take special care designing the transitional edges, where the garden abuts the natural landscape. “This is often overlooked,” says Allen, “but it’s the big deal.” Instead of an abrupt edge of regimented plants that stops unnaturally where the more random wilderness begins, you want a softer, more irregular placement of perennials and shrubs to ease the transition. “Pick up on the meandering line that’s already there and just organize it a bit more,” explains Allen. “You want the woods to seem part of your property.”
• Many native woodland plants bloom exuberantly in spring, but few cottagers are there to see them. Because the summer woodland garden is more subdued, with cooling greens and foliage texture providing interest, you can add some colour by planting perennials that produce berries later in the season, such as false Solomon’s seal, and berry-producing shrubs like elderberry. The fruits will also draw an enthusiastic audience of birds.

Lorraine Johnson is the author of numerous books on native plant gardening, including 100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants, and The New Ontario Naturalized Garden. Her most recent book is a collection of essays, The Natural Treasures of Carolinian Canada, which she edited. Lorraine lives in Toronto and depends on the kindness of cottage-owning friends for her summer visits to Georgian Bay and the Kawarthas.

Repurposed from the four-part series, The Natural Garden by Lorraine Johnson in the June 2003 issue of Cottage Life magazine

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Flower photo: Randy Craig