No other type of landscape can enchant quite like a cottage garden. Charming mixes of flowers, edibles, perennials, shrubs, annuals, espaliered fruit trees, evergreens and more give these gardens a wide variety of colors, heights and shapes, creating storybook surroundings. Their anything-goes style makes them a great way to dip into gardening if you haven’t tried it before. Before you dig in a trowel, let these 12 delightful examples inspire you. Capability Chris 1. Some architecture insists on a cottage garden. A house in England with a thatched roof would look as though it forgot to put on its pants without a cottage garden dressing it. Stone walls, wild mounds of flowers, plants of different heights and lots of color make this home a wonderland. Paintbox Garden 2. Look to Colonial Williamsburg for inspiration. Early settlers in America brought English cottage gardens with them from the start, often incorporating edibles and herbs. Colonial Williamsburg, pictured here, is one of the best places to study American cottage gardens.

Here you can see how important it is to think about texture as well as color. And don’t stop with the flowers. Spiky, soft, glossy, silvered, light green, bright green, dark green — the leaves are a key consideration too.

In this plan, while colorful foxgloves add whimsy and height to the garden, strict brick paths add some formal organization.

See more Williamsburg cottage garden inspirations Premier Service 3. So, yes, add a little order. Cottage gardens are wild and woolly, but they look best when some sort of order is imposed. At this Illinois carriage house, brick paths and a low evergreen hedge hem in the less formal arrangement of plants.

Another cottage garden element seen here is letting plants cover walls. Espaliered trees add life, texture and color to the white walls. Goff Architecture 4. Still, boundaries are made to be broken. Plants that climb, creep and spill over walls and fences are ideal. NatureWorks Landscape Services, Inc. 5. No straight lines are required. A meandering edge suits these mounds of flowers just fine. This garden gets a bit of order by arranging the flowers from lowest to highest from front to back. JuliaGarden Design Ltd. 6. No flowering plant is too tall. In this dreamy garden on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, yellow tree roses, dinner-plate dahlias and sunflowers draw the eye up, while French marigolds, floss flowers and dusty millers provide color closer to the ground. CK Architects 7. A cottage garden can fit in anywhere. Back yard, side yard, front yard, between the sidewalk and the street — the delight of a cottage garden is welcome anywhere (unless plantings are restricted by a homeowners association). This patch of mounding and colorful plants adds miles of curb appeal. Goff Architecture 8. “Overgrown” can be a good thing. A vine-covered arbor at the gate lets visitors know there are great gardens to come beyond the picket fence. The Aldrich Company - Landscape Design 9. There’s no such thing as too much color. There are no color rules in a cottage garden. No matter how many pinks, oranges, purples and reds you mix, they won’t clash, as the garden by this lovely stone house in Santa Barbara, California, proves. Summerset Gardens/Joe Weuste 10. That said, feel free to stick to your favorite palette. In this garden, greens and purples dominate, thanks to plants like astilbe, loosestrife, scaevola and verbena. To learn more about color theory in the garden, I recommend reading Gertrude Jekyll for inspiration. Dear Garden Associates, Inc. 11. Leave room to meander. Of course, you’ll want to enjoy your cottage garden to the max. Tuck in pathways and chairs or benches where you can sit and smell the lavender. Casual stone pavers and pea gravel are two good choices for cottage garden paths. Chelsea Pineda Interiors 12. The more romantic the garden architecture, the better. A whimsical picket fence, welcoming arbor and even a birdhouse make this Los Angeles cottage even more fetching. Red roses play off the red front door and rocking chair, while creeping thyme softens the stone path.

Tell us: Do you have a cottage garden in your home? What are some of your favorite plants in it? Please share your tips and pictures in the Comments section.