I’m Julie Quinn and welcome to my gardening blog about a cottage garden in North London.
My style is a jumbled close planting of shrubs and simple perennials with lots of bulbs, self seeders and herbs. I’m aiming for a chaotic abundance of colour, scent and movement.
![london-cottage-garden-3](https://i0.wp.com/londoncottagegarden.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/london-cottage-garden-3.jpg?resize=800%2C597&ssl=1)
The front garden in Spring
![And this is the back.](https://i0.wp.com/londoncottagegarden.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/london-cottage-garden-1.jpg?resize=800%2C597&ssl=1)
And this is the back garden
This blog is about how I work on creating this style of garden and what I love about it – what I plant and what I don’t – what has worked and what hasn’t and how we use the space.
Previously
We came in 1988 and the garden looked like this:
![garden-1980](https://i0.wp.com/londoncottagegarden.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/garden-1980.jpg?resize=480%2C322&ssl=1)
the beginning of my making a garden
We were so lucky to inherit a magnolia and an apple tree in the back and a big cherry tree in the front.
![garden-1980-1](https://i0.wp.com/londoncottagegarden.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/garden-1980-1.jpg?resize=480%2C314&ssl=1)
front garden in 1988
Sadly the cherry tree died many years ago and we took it out.
We’ve had to put up a few new fences over the years but started out with this one.
I’d previously done nothing more than plant petunias in a window box in a first floor flat.
For a few years we lived with the lawn, conifers, azaleas and rambling roses.
Then in the 1990s I visited East Lambrook Manor in Somerset and fell in love with hardy geraniums, alchemilla and the wild unkempt look of a true cottage garden – I was hooked!