A Garden Just Like Mom's: Plant an Old-Fashioned Garden

Old-fashioned gardens, reminiscent of your grandmother's garden use heirloom, or old-fashioned flowers. You can recreate a "garden of delight", like the garden that you may have played in as a child. The flowers of the old-fashioned garden are the classic flowers that are familiar, sturdy, beautiful and easy to grow.

Interest in the old-fashioned style garden has grown over the last twenty years. There are plant nurseries that concentrate on plants that have been around for fifty years. An old-fashioned garden can be planted with plants from a nursery, or they can be grown from seed.

Following are many of the"unimproved" species, that are some of the favorites of people who plant old-fashioned gardens:

Bachelor's Button: Also called Cornflowers and Knapweeds, The Bachelor's Button is from the Aster family. Merry heads of blue flowers on easy growing annual plants. They like full sun.

Bee Balm - Monarda: Perennials are natives of North America. Showy, spidery flowers come in magenta, red, scarlet and pink.

Bellflowers: Canterbury Bells have purple bell shaped blooms.

Bleeding Hearts: Perennials with small, heart shaped blooms on arching stems. Bleeding Hearts love shade. Blooms come in pink, red and white.

Bouncing Bet - Soapwort: flowers of pink bloom fro July to September. There is a natural soap in the leaves. Grows wild along the roadside.

China Aster: Wildflower with purple bloom 2.5 to 3.5 inches long.

Columbines: interesting shaped flowers bloom in the early summer. Columbines come in a variety of color.

English Primrose: Flowers bloom in almost every color of the rainbow. Blooms in the early spring.

Feverfew: Plant has small, daisy-like heads of yellow flowers with outer white rays.

Forget-me-nots: Small, flat five petaled blue flowers on relatively short stems.

Foxglove's Mantle

Garden Phlox: Tall plants with clusters of blooms. Blooms from mid-summer until late August. Flowers in white, pink, purple and lavender.

Gas Plant: Perennial herb. Flowers form in loose pyramidal spike.

Golden Marguerite: Sturdy plant grows form 1 to 1.5 feet. Bushy plant with daisy-like yellow flowers from June until Fall.

Hollyhock: grows 1 to 3 feet tall. Large bell shaped blooms come in shades of white, red and purple.

Jacob's ladder: Perennial plant with blue blooms that bloom from April to June.

Lady's Mantle: Dainty star shaped flowers and lime green leaves.

Lemon's Lily: Small lily with 3 inch lemon yellow flowers.

Lily-of-the-Valley: Small, shade loving plants with glossy green leaves and spikes of small white bell shaped flowers.

Love-lies-bleeding: Long, slender spikes of red or gold droop in a tassel like style. Grows 3 to 5 feet.

Maltese Cross: Plants with 3 to 4 foot stems with scarlet-orange cluster of Maltese Cross shaped flowers.

Marsh Mallow: Plants grows 2 to 4 feet and has grayish, velveting leaves. 1.5 inch pink blooms flower from August to October.

Morning Glory: Grows in vine, with blue bell shaped flowers.

Nasturtium: Carefree, colorful plants come in shades or yellow and orange.
Oriental Poppy

Peony: Perennials with large flowers in a variety of colors, including black, coral, cream, crimson, pink, purple, rose, scarlet, white and yellow.

Pinks: Tender annual of the Dianthus family. Pinks can be colored pink, rose, light red and white.

Pot Marigold - Calendula: Brights yellow and orange flowers are popular in cottage gardens.

Sea Pink - Common Thrift: Dense mound of dark green leaves with a cover of white to pink flowers from spring to summer.

Snowdrops: Drooping white flowers bloom in very early spring.

Sweet Violet: Small purple and violet blooms flower in early spring.

Resources:
Burpee: The Complete Flower Gardener, by Karan Davis Cutler and Barbara W. Ellis