This is a series of 3 photographs of my favourite cottage garden on Main Street Menston. Late summer each year will see me leaning over the Yorkshire stone wall to admire the ‘gaudy’ collection of flowers that create one enormous display.

Design Features

• The hard landscape is suitably constrained and smacks of belonging to a true plantsman or plantswoman. The red brick from the family home and a small section of slatted paneling limits the borders of this front garden.
• The garden barely needs to borrow from the surrounding landscape but the old grey Yorkshire stone walls add a timelessness to a short lived period of glory from the plants.
• Like my garden this garden suffers from a drain cover in an inconvenient spot but it is as disguised as practical with the wooden hooped barrel used as a plant pot. (How else can they get more flowers on show?)
• The central bed is designed as a lozenge rather than a more normal oval or circle. It works well and allows the gardener access from all 4 sides.

Flowers on Display

• The main feature is not of structural plants or herbaceous perennials but the selection of  bright cheerful annuals.
• Wispy Cosmos and Nicotiana edge over the roadside wall on which I lean to take these three photographs.
• Good strong yellow flowers predominate and link the whole composition together. I particularly like the Tagetes, Marigolds and Rudbeckia .
• It would be churlish to mention the grass which is in fair condition towards the end of summer.