About English Gardens

There are two types of English herb gardens.  The cottage herb garden is a small garden that is located near your kitchen door and contains both medicinal and cooking herbs.   The formal garden contains beautiful flowers that are meant to bring a smile to your face.

History of English Gardens

English herb gardens were developed in the nineteenth century.  Before then, these herbs were incorporated into the kitchen garden, which was a small plot near the kitchen door that included herbs, flowers and vegetables.  Formal gardens included both herbs and flowers in some type of geometric pattern.  They oftentimes contained brick pathways, metal or wood gates, containers and stonewalls too.

The Size of Your English Garden

While a formal herb garden can be any size, the cottage herb garden is usually small.  They would normally contain some small herbs measuring one foot tall or less for example parsley, chives, thyme and cilantro, some medium sized herbs measuring less than two feet tall (i.e. thyme, peppermint, tarragon, marjoram and basil) and some large herbs measuring between four and six feet tall like rosemary, lavender, lemon verbena and sage.

Features of an English Garden

The English cottage herb garden usually contains a lot of herbs in a small plot.  The only way in which they may be separated is by their medicinal and culinary uses.  Otherwise, they are planted according to their height with the taller ones in the back.  They will also have a geometric shape (i.e. square, circle, diamond, triangle).