How to landscape Swedish Cottage Style

When we bought our homestead in November 2020, it was the beginning of Winter, the landscape was dormant and dead and we were entirely focused on getting the interior of our cottage to a livable state. And I use the term “livable” loosely. We lived without a working kitchen for weeks and no walls in our living room for over a year. Heck, my bathroom is still borderline un-liveable. This is the price you pay for acerage!

Three weeks after we moved in to our construction zone- I mean home– an historic ice storm struck our valley and took down dozens of trees on our property. Like upwards of 30 trees. Consequently, between the rough state of our house and dealing with all the downed trees, it’s taken us until now to tackle our front yard landscaping.

What did the landscape look like before?

Well, it looked like nothing. Because there was nothing besides a couple lonely rhododendrons and a whole heap of grass. I’m not sure if there ever was a “yard” here to begin with, you can never tell when there’s been so many years of neglect, but it sure doesn’t seem like it.

As you may be able to tell, the summer after we purchased our place, we had the exterior painted. The siding was on the verge of needing to be replaced- which we did in some beat up sections- and it was important to protect it. We were also looking forward to seeing our vision of a little “Swedish” cottage come to life here in Oregon.

The day the painters came, the boys and I spent the entire day outside watching them paint. What a transformation! It was so satisfying to see it change so fast, to watch it go from drab to bright and cheery! And since then, I’ve been dreaming of landscaping the heck out of it to really make it look like a cozy cottage in the Swedish countryside.

So…what’s the hold up?

This has been so much tricker to figure out than I anticipated. I mean, I’m a gardener, I should know what things to plant right? WRONG! Landscaping from absolute scratch has been so overwhelming and found me frozen with indecision. Here’s a few of the problems I’ve encountered when trying to landscape our front yard:

• No structure. As I’ve mentioned, there was nothing in place when we purchased our home. We have concrete front steps, but there were no sidewalks, no previously laid out garden beds or even a “real” driveway. As we worked on the house, backing various vehicles up to the front steps to haul lumber in and demo trash out through the rain, we sufficiently destroyed the grass that was there.
• A long, winding path. In order to get from the driveway (and the natural parking area) to the front door organically, the path needed to be kind of long and winding. Romantic, yes, but cost prohibitive when it comes to materials. The first Spring I bought a heap of river rock, put down weed tarp, put the rocks along the edges and filled in with pea gravel. And that’s when my problems began. It wasn’t the right type of gravel and you sank in deep when you stepped in it. Grass quickly took over every spare centimeter between the rocks. It doesn’t have a clean edge when you mow and frankly, it looks a mess.
• Budget. Over the last few years my husband and I have worked really hard to get out of debt. This hasn’t been an easy thing to tackle while living in a place where every square inch needs work. Truthfully, it’s been extremely discouraging at times. My grass-infested path and tiny strip of flowers has sat there untouched (and a mess) for several years. But our hard work and patience has paid off, we have saved for this project and we are ready to invest the money (and time) into doing it right!
• Shrubbery. I don’t like shrubs. There, I said it. Every photo I’ve ever Pinned has been an ode to my love of an English cottage style garden. Flowers, flowering bushes, flowering climbing vines with some greenery mixed in. But never the typical shrubs you see in so many professionally landscaped yards here in the US. As you can imagine, when it comes to “landscaping” a front yard, going against the usual makes things extra tricky.
• Full shade. 3/4 of the planting space in the front yard is heavily shaded by very old trees. They are beautiful and provide incredible shade in the hot summer months, keeping our little house cool even without AC, but they do present a challenge for growing many types of plants and shrubs.

My plan for the landscape of our Swedish Cottage

We have a very temperate climate here in the Willamette Valley. We don’t see much snow, and it pretty much rains from November to May. I’m not complaining, all that rain means we have insanely beautiful temperate rain forests, mighty rivers and fertile farmland. But, the rain also means that nothing gets covered up in Winter by a nice, clean blanket of snow.

Every Fall my perennials die back, leaving the small existing bed I have in front of the house looking like a mud pit all Winter long. It’s not pretty, there’s no life or color and it’s just kind of a bummer to come home to. We live on a quiet country road, but the way our property sits, you can see the front elevation of our house nearly the whole time you are driving by.

Here’s the look we’re hoping for:

• Evergreen “skeleton.” I’m hoping to source some shrubs/evergreens that will allow me to build a sort of “skeleton” upon which all of the other plantings can be built. This will add height, dimension and will also stay green and lively in the wintertime when all my perennial and annual plantings die back.
• Add a few dwarf trees. Speaking of adding height, we want to find a way to add texture and dimension to the beds on either side of the path without losing our view. Enter, dwarf trees. I’m thinking at least one flowering dwarf tree and several more conical shaped evergreens.
• Burm it up. My mom gave me this idea as she’s planning to use it at their lake cabin this Spring, and I thought it was a smart way to level up these very large beds. Hopefully, by making some burms (basically dirt piles), using some large landscape rocks and strategically planting the burms, it’ll add a really nice effect to the big, empty planting space.
• Heavily interplant with perennials. If the front yard (aka “Cottage Gardens”) are going to be an evergreen “skeleton” in the Winter, my goal for Spring, Summer and Autumn is for them to be thick, lush and overflowing with life. Spring bulbs in March and April. Roses, peonies and foxgloves in May and June. Hydrangeas, dahlias and Black-Eyed Susans as Summer turns into Fall.

How we’re planning to make it all happen

So obviously, making the current NOTHING into a beautiful SOMETHING is going to be a good bit of work. Here are the steps we’ve mapped out to make it happen over the next couple of months.

• Every Saturday is Family Work Day. This isn’t new for us, we do Family Work Day every Saturday, life and weather permitting. But in this season, with a big project like this ahead, we’re planning to be a little more intense about it. The days are blocked off on the calendar each week (minus a few soccer games for our oldest) and we will spend the week before prepping so we are ready to get right to work Saturday morning.
• Finish the Sprinklers. Last fall my husband worked super hard to install a comprehensive sprinkler system for our yard area. It was SO much work and I’m so grateful for such a handy farmer who knows his way around irrigation set ups. We need to finish hooking up the Sprinkler heads, clock system and fill in the many trenches.
• Fix the messy path. So my plan for the path isn’t all that different EXCEPT we plan to remove the rocks, line everything with cardboard, add a fresh layer of the RIGHT KIND of gravel, re-line the path with boulders and then landscape on either side. This will leave us a clean, mowable edge of the garden bed, as no rocks will be between grass and bed. The rocks will simply separate the path from the planting spaces.
• No-Dig method. Though there were a lot of failures with my initial path, the initial Cottage Garden bed I put in worked SUPER well. I used the No-Dig method, popularized by Charles Dowding, laying down cardboard and topping it with 6-8 inches of compost. In three years I’ve maybe weeded this bed 5 times. It has done phenomenal, the perennials I have had in there have thrived and when it’s trim and tidy, it’s absolutely beautiful. We will be using this method for all new beds and for fixing the path.
• Plant shopping! Unsurprisingly, this might be the part I’m looking forward to the most. I think we will try to do it in waves. Shopping local nurseries first for the evergreen skeleton, then filling in with various perennials all season long. In the fall I’ll add more Spring bulbs and Hellebores, and then all kinds of new things in the Spring! This will also help make the budget work, spreading things out so we’re buying a few things each month instead of one big splurge.

Follow along!

You don’t want to miss a second of this fun project do you!? I’ve started an Instagram account after taking a few years off from social media just so I can document projects like this in a more casual, up to the minute way. Head on over and give me a follow so you don’t miss out on the progress of this project.

You can also Pin this image below so other people can get ideas for their Swedish Cottage landscaping. And I’d love if you’d leave a comment and let me know what you think! Any advice?

Kali

I’m Kali. Oregon mama, farmer’s wife and creator of the Potager book and blog. Join me and as we cook and garden through the seasons!