The cottage-garden style has been part of British gardening for centuries. The first cottage gardeners had little time, space and money, and designed simple and practical settings for their homes which, in time, developed into more elaborate, and sometimes extravagant, gardens. In this book Geoff Hamilton looks to the superb old cottages of the past and adapts the more popular features to modern gardens. In building three cottage gardens from scratch at his home in Barnsdale, he sets out to simplify the practical problems of creating a natural rustic look and shows how to build new constructions such as arbours and bowers, arches, seats and boundaries to suit readers' budgets. A diverse selection of planting plans emphasizing colour schemes and perfume, with explanations of how to cultivate cottage-style plants, has also been included. Practical advice covers a variety of subjects such as herbaceous plants, roses, perennials and annuals, climbers, bulbs, containers, herbs, vegetables and fruit.