Drought-Tolerant Garden Plan, Deer-Resistant Water-Wise Cottage Border, Zones 5–9 Full Sun, Printable Planting Guide PDF

Create a beautiful, water-wise cottage garden border with this premade printable garden plan from Bloom From Root, now with an illustrated Garden Planner spreadsheet that works out exactly how many plants to buy for your own bed.

This digital guide is designed for full sun gardens in USDA Hardiness Zones 5–9 and features twelve drought-tolerant, deer-resistant plants chosen for colour, texture, structure and seasonal interest. It's ideal for gardeners who want a calm, naturalistic cottage garden look without starting from scratch.

NEW: the Garden Planner. Choose a layout, type your bed's length and depth, and see how many of each plant to buy, scaled to your bed, with a picture of every plant.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

You will receive five files:

• 23-page Garden Plan (PDF): three layouts, the Plant Schedule, a plant directory, a full page for each of the twelve plants, Preparing Your Bed and a Bloom Calendar
• 7-page Start Here guide with Shopping Checklist (PDF): choose your layout, your plants at a glance, your first planting weekend, where each plant goes and a before-and-after planting checklist
• Garden Planner spreadsheet (.xlsx): plant numbers scaled to your bed, a cost calculator, colour-coded bloom calendar, care calendar, plant data and a picture gallery of all twelve plants. Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers and LibreOffice
• How to Print guide (PDF)
• Read Me file

THREE LAYOUTS

• Classic Sunny Front Walk: two mirrored beds either side of a path, 40 plants
• Hot & Dry Gravel Corner: about 10 × 10 ft, 26 plants
• Water-Wise Curbside / Narrow Border: about 22 × 4 ft, 29 plants

GARDEN STYLE

A soft, resilient planting palette of lavender, Russian sage, catmint, yarrow, coneflower, autumn stonecrop, switchgrass, coreopsis, agastache, baptisia, sea holly and blue fescue.

The result is a layered cottage-style border with silvery foliage, blue-purple flowers, soft yellow accents, rosy late-season colour and airy grasses, with seedheads and structure into winter.

BEST FOR

• Full sun garden areas
• Cottage garden borders
• Water-wise planting schemes
• Deer-resistant garden planning
• Gravel gardens and dry sunny borders
• Front walk borders, curbside strips and sunny corner beds
• Gardeners who want a clear premade plan to follow

PAIRS BEAUTIFULLY WITH

Many of the plants in this guide, including lavender, catmint, yarrow, agastache and coneflower, are also excellent nectar sources for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

If you would like to lean into that, our Pollinator Garden Plan offers three garden layouts, a nectar-rich plant directory and a bloom calendar designed to support pollinators through the whole season.

Planning it all out? Our Gardening Journal & Planner adds 48 printable pages and a Planting Calendar that works out your sowing dates from your frost dates.

You can find both, along with our other printable planting guides, in the Bloom From Root shop.

IMPORTANT NOTES

This is a premade digital garden guide, not a custom garden design service.

Water-wise means the plants are selected for good drought tolerance once established. New plants still need regular watering while they settle in, especially during their first growing season.

Deer-resistant means the plants are generally less likely to be browsed, not deer-proof. Deer behaviour varies by region, season, hunger level and local conditions.

Please check plant suitability and availability with your local nursery or garden centre before purchasing plants.

HOW IT WORKS

After purchase, download your files, open the Start Here guide and choose the layout that best suits your space. Use the Garden Planner or the Plant Schedule to see how many plants to buy, and take the Shopping Checklist with you to your nursery.

Print at home or through a local print shop using Actual size (100 percent), or keep the files on your device for reference.

This is an instant digital download. No physical item will be shipped.

PERSONAL USE ONLY

This digital product is for personal garden use only.

You may not resell, share, redistribute, upload, copy, or use any part of this guide to create a competing product.

If anything isn't right with your files, send us a message and we'll help.

Beautiful by design · Resilient by nature

Bloom From Root