©
Janet Davis
The cottage garden style dates back to the
humble peasants’ gardens of the Middle Ages; it was later romanticized by
workers in Victorian and Edwardian 
England
who possessed more in the way of gardening inspiration than money or land.
Their tiny, colourful gardens were typically planted with an informal profusion
of roses, vines, vegetables, berries, small fruit trees, old-fashioned
perennials, common annuals and biennials that could be relied upon to self-seed
and fill empty spaces. If lacking in grandeur, these gardens were rich in
charm.
In the large ornamental potager behind
Toronto’s historic Spadina House, the "cottage garden look" is very
much in evidence. Once you gaze past the formal structure of the potager
itself, with its four even quadrants and its geometric intersecting paths, you
see a delightful flower-and-vegetable garden where informality rules the day.
Each of the four segments is comprised of a billowing perimeter of herbaceous
perennials, including plants like lupine, peony, iris, anthemis, Shasta daisy,
veronica, tradescantia, catmint and Japanese anemone. Mixed into this soft,
perennial framework is a profusion of delightful self-seeding biennials such as
forget-me-not, foxglove and sweet 
William.
Each spring, in the area within the four segments, head gardener Wendy
Woodworth then does her yearly planting of vegetables (apart from perennial
crops like strawberry) and pretty annual flowers for the cutting garden. So,
along with the lettuce, there’s gomphrena; along with the cabbage, snapdragons; along with the Swiss chard,
nasturtiums. Annuals grown for cutting are combined with an eye for the best aesthetic
result -- purple ageratum with tall,
orange Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), an easy-from-seed
annual that's a magnet for butterflies.
In a small rectangular bed adjacent to the potager, there’s even a nod to the period of history that romanticized cottage garden style. Using the garden records of Spadina’s 19th century occupants, the 1880 Garden was designed to display only those bedding plants, such as sweet alyssum, that were actually used in the gardens when the Austin family lived in the house.
If "everything old is new again", then Spadina House’s cottage garden style is a wonderful example of improving on history to make it contemporary and beautiful.
Toronto’s historic Spadina House was built in 1866 by the Austin family, who occupied it for four generations before selling it to the City of Toronto which now operates it as a museum. In the early 1980s, Spadina’s extensive Victorian and Edwardian gardens were lovingly and historically restored by the Garden Club of Toronto. Located at 285 Spadina Road, the museum is open from 12-5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday. Admission fee applies. The gardens may be visited during those hours free of charge.
Adapted from an article that appeared originally at Chapters Online