The Cottage Garden has
evolved through a number of changes from when we first began to make the garden at Longmeadow in the spring of 1993. By then I had planned the layout of the whole garden, which meant I could start planting hedges and trees, but the role and function of the spaces or mini-gardens that this created was – and to a certain extent still is – fluid. So the Cottage Garden was intended to be a play lawn for the children, who were then toddlers.
However, when the tractor I hired ploughed the first furrow I saw that the soil here was wonderfully rich and structured and would be wasted on a mere lawn. I decided then and there to make it our vegetable garden. The first thing that I planted was box hedging flanking the path running across the garden to the Jewel Garden (which spent its first few years as the play lawn for the children until that too got dug up – but that is another story). I also added an avenue of espaliered pear trees and these provided the main structure of this area. It remained the veg garden for nearly 20 years and the superb soil got better and better with tons of compost added to it every year.