Logo

Why Perennials and Herbs Belong Together

A cottage garden border is not a tidy thing. It is generous, slightly unruly, and full of plants that jostle one another for space. That is precisely why perennials and herbs make such good companions. Perennials give you the backbone of colour that returns year after year, whilst herbs add foliage, scent and a soft, blowsy texture that bedding plants simply cannot match.

If you plant a border along a garden path, a low stone wall or the edge of a vegetable patch, you also get the benefit of brushing past thyme or oregano on a warm evening. That scent is half the pleasure of country living, and it costs nothing.

Getting the Site and Soil Right

Most cottage plants want the same thing: sun for at least six hours a day, and soil that drains but holds a little moisture in summer. Before you buy anything, dig over the strip to a spade's depth and remove perennial weeds such as ground elder and couch grass. They will ruin a new border within a season if you leave them.

Spread two or three barrowloads of well-rotted farmyard manure or garden compost per square metre over the surface and fork it into the top 20cm. If your soil is heavy clay, add grit as well. If it is thin and chalky, compost is your friend. Aim for a slightly acid to neutral soil, around pH 6.5, though most of the plants below will tolerate a little either way.

The classic cottage border mistake is making it too narrow. A metre is the minimum; 1.5m lets you layer properly, front to back.

Lupins, Geraniums and Thyme: The Layered Plan

The trick to a natural look is simple: tall at the back, medium in the middle, low and spreading at the front, with a few plants allowed to lean forwards and blur the edges. Nothing should sit in a straight row.

• Back of the border (90–150cm): lupins in blues, pinks and creams, planted in groups of three or five. Add a clump of Salvia nemorosa for a long season of indigo spikes, and a rosemary or two if the site is sheltered and dry.
• Middle (45–90cm): hardy geraniums are the workhorses here. Geranium x magnificum gives a froth of violet-blue in early summer, whilst Geranium 'Rozanne' flowers from June until the first frosts. Tuck in chives and a bronze fennel for height without weight.
• Front (15–45cm): creeping thyme is ideal for edging, spilling over paving and softening the border's foot. Plant it 20–25cm apart and it will knit together in one season. Add alpine pinks, lady's mantle and a few clumps of oregano for the bees.

Repeat your plant choices two or three times along the border rather than planting one of everything. Repetition is what makes a border look designed rather than collected.

Planting and Spacing

Autumn is the best time to plant, whilst the soil is still warm, though spring works perfectly well if you keep everything watered through the first summer. Set plants out on the soil in their pots first and stand back to check the arrangement before you dig.

Space perennials at roughly half their eventual spread, so a geranium that reaches 60cm goes in 30cm from its neighbour. They will fill the gaps by midsummer. Thyme and other herbs prefer a little grit mixed into the planting hole — a handful of horticultural grit at the roots helps enormously on heavy ground.

Water everything in well, even if rain is forecast, and mulch around the plants with 5cm of compost, keeping it clear of the stems. Lupins will need a stout cane or a twiggy hazel support in May, before the flower spikes appear, or a windy June will flatten them.

Care Through the Seasons

Once established, this border asks very little of you.

• Spring: cut back thyme and oregano lightly to keep them bushy, and divide any geraniums that have gone woody in the centre.
• Early summer: stake lupins, deadhead spent flower spikes to encourage a second flush in late summer.
• Midsummer: shear geraniums back after their first flowering and they will reward you with fresh leaves and more blooms.
• Autumn: leave seedheads on the fennel and salvia for the birds, and cut everything down to the ground in late winter or early spring, once the worst of the frost has passed.

Divide overcrowded clumps every three years in autumn. It keeps the plants vigorous and gives you free stock for another border.

Scent, Bees and a Few Cuttings

Plant thyme close to a path or a bench, where you can crush a sprig between finger and thumb as you pass. Let a little of it flower — the bees adore it, and the tiny pink and purple blooms are a joy in June.

Keep the border generous rather than neat. Allow self-seeded lady's mantle and foxgloves to stay where they land, fill any gaps with a handful of annuals such as calendula and cornflower, and you will have a border that looks settled within two summers and better with every year that follows.