Down the Lanes
Cottage garden styles often emerge firstly from the need to accommodate their terrain. On the peninsula of Cornwall, coastal fishing villages are perched only yards above sea level where borders require serious drainage from generous rains. Where flower beds aren't hanging off the cliffs, raised beds comply. The elevation of this planting completely hides the ground floor of a two story house, giving the illusion of a bungalow. What appears to be the front door, is a second story window! In keeping with cottage-gardening tradition, Nature provides structural building materials such as in this sea-tumbled cobble retaining wall.
What appears to be bigger-than-life delphiniums (!) is a stand of Echium pininana dwarfing the cottage. The blue flower towers, native to the Canary Islands and the palm tree leaning in from the left, remind us of early plant explorers' bounty brought home to adorn the land.
They are an unexpected, awesome sight rising out of the pastoral scenes and even stranger to behold at close range.
Even closer, the lens loses more of the blue. These alien-looking towers support entire ecosystems of bees and bugs.
Cornwall's climate equates to the AHS zone 9, able to sustain palm trees and the wide range of tropicals. Although North Central Texas gardens roast in hotter and longer summers, our flash freezes in winter would soon put an end to these beauties.