My ‘Cottage Garden’ colours

I have chosen my colours for Rachell’s CAL.

As I understand it the flowers in cottage gardens were originally there to attract bees who would then pollinate the fruit and vegetable crops.

Now the colour flowers that bees especially like are apparently blue, purple, violet, white and yellow.

The colours that especially said ‘cottage garden’ to me were these.

And the reason I voted for the ‘cottage garden’ colour scheme was because I felt that I would like to work with these colours.

Stylecraft calls these colours: lavender, wisterior and clematis, all flowers you might find in a cottage garden.

But also think herbs: rosemary, thyme, mint, nepeta (so loved by cats), as well as cranesbill, aubretia and the buddleia that seems to pop up uninvited all over Southampton.

Rosemary

For blue: think borage, campanula, and the love-in-a-mist that I so liked planting in my corner of the garden when I was a child.

For Yellow: think hollyhocks, honeysuckle and sunflowers. Bees also like dandelions apparently.

Yellow Dandelion

Bees like other hollyhocks as well and the lavatera in my garden

Lavatera – Rosea

even though these are pink, as are foxgloves and sedum spectabile: other bee favourites.

Pink Sedum

Even though they are less attractive to bees, I associate cottage gardens with pink roses round the door
and marigolds.

Orange Marigold

Marigolds are not favoured by bees but are thought by some to deter pests so that may justify their inclusion in a cottage garden as well as their edible petals..

All the above are my chosen colours but I have also chosen a representative green as well.

The more I thought about it the more I realised one could probably justify the inclusion of any colour (except maybe black, browns and greys) under the title of ‘cottage garden’ but these are the ones I would like to work with.

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