Cottage Garden Plan PDF, Drawn to Scale Sunny Border, Native Plants (7-page Download)

A drawn, to-scale planting plan for a 24 ft x 15 ft sunny border. Eleven species, thirty-two plants, chosen because they survive a Piedmont summer - not because they look right on an English postcard.

THE COTTAGE GARDEN IS AN ENGLISH IDEA, AND ENGLAND IS NOT THIS

The classic cottage palette - delphinium, lupin, foxglove, English lavender, hollyhock - was built for cool summers and long damp springs. Put it in North Carolina clay under a July heat index of 105 and most of it is gone in two seasons. That is not a gardening failure. It is a climate mismatch.

This plan keeps the look of a cottage border - informal drifts, layered heights, long overlapping bloom, no bare mulch - and swaps the plant list for species the NC State Extension Plant Toolbox documents as full sun and heat tolerant here.

WHAT YOU GET (7-page PDF, instant download)

- The plan, drawn to scale, on a full page
- Plant schedule: 32 plants, 11 species, with quantity, mature size, light and position
- A USDA hardiness zone range on every single plant, looked up individually
- What the plan assumes about your site, so you can rule it out before buying anything
- A page on what I left out and why
- Installation sequence and the care that actually matters
- Sources, cited

EVERY CIRCLE IS THE PLANT AT FULL SIZE

Not its nursery-pot size. The commonest mistake in a border is planting at pot spacing, which looks right for two years and is a thicket by year five. Nothing in this drawing overlaps at maturity.

NO LAVENDER

English lavender is printed for Zones 5a-9b, so on paper it fits. In practice it wants sharp drainage and dry air, and Piedmont clay in August gives it neither. It is the single most common cottage-garden disappointment I get asked about. Foxglove, delphinium and hollyhock are out for the same reason: they are cool-summer plants that give you one good year and then thin.

WHY THE DRAWING LOOKS STAGGERED

A cottage border is not a parade. Each drift of three is offset slightly from its neighbours so the edges interlock at maturity instead of forming a straight line.

WHERE IT APPLIES

Drawn from USDA Zones 7b-8a - the North Carolina Piedmont, where I work. That band also covers upstate South Carolina, north Georgia, middle and east Tennessee, central and southern Virginia, and the warm Piedmont edge into Maryland. Nine of the eleven species run from Zone 3a or 4a, so the planting travels a long way further than that. Check the zone column against your own zone before you order.

THE HONEST PART

In winter this border does almost nothing. Nine of the eleven species die back to the ground. If you want the same bed to carry a winter, that is a different plan and it needs woody plants.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not a design for your address - I have not seen your site, grade or soil. Not an engineered drawing. I am a licensed North Carolina landscape contractor (CL.1872), not a professional engineer and not a registered landscape architect.

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