The Cottage Garden Movement is an informal English garden style and reform movement that emerged in the 1870s as a deliberate reaction against the rigid, geometric bedding schemes of Victorian formal gardening. It favors dense, seemingly casual plantings that mix ornamental and edible plants for charm and grace rather than grandeur. Its two leading exponents, the writer and gardener William Robinson and the designer Gertrude Jekyll, worked together for decades; their garden designs became closely tied to Arts and Crafts style houses, and the movement is often traced to Robinson's 1870 book The Wild Garden.
Facts
OriginTraced to 1870s England, sparked by William Robinson's 1870 book The Wild Garden and carried forward through his fifty-year working friendship with Gertrude Jekyll, whom he met in 1875. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Cottagecore's romanticized rural imagery draws directly on the older cottage garden ideal.
Jekyll and Robinson worked together for over fifty years and their designs defined the movement's look
The book is treated as the movement's founding text
Robinson's 1870 book The Wild Garden is treated as the movement's founding text
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