Sun · colour all summer

Cottage garden design, from a photo of your own garden.

Get a cottage garden design built around your real space: upload a photo, choose the cottage style, and see your borders reimagined as a romantic, billowing English cottage garden – then get a planting plan of real cottage garden plants you can actually buy.

First design free · no card needed · UK plants
A garden designed in the cottage garden design style
Built by professional gardenersReal UK plants & planting plans Photorealistic in about two minutes
Cottage garden design

What makes a cottage garden design

A true cottage garden design is generous and a little unruly: densely planted borders where flowers spill over paths, roses climb every wall, and there is barely a patch of bare soil to be seen. It is the most romantic of the English garden styles, and the one people most often want when they picture a garden full of colour and scent.

Garden Design App builds that look around your actual garden. Instead of handing you a stock image of someone else's cottage garden, it reads a photo of your space, keeps your fences, paths and trees where they are, and redesigns the planting into a layered cottage border you could genuinely create.

Signature planting

The plants that make the look.

The planting plan lists them in full, with how many to buy and where each goes – so the garden in the picture is one you can actually plant.

Foxgloves

classic cottage spires for early summer height

Delphiniums

tall towers of blue, purple or white at the back

Lupins

bold candles of colour – pinks, blues and yellows

Hollyhocks

cottage-wall stalwarts that reach for the sky

Peonies

big, blowsy blooms in late spring

Salvias

deep violet-blue spires that flower for months

Catmint

hazy blue edging that bees adore

Hardy geraniums

long-flowering, weed-smothering ground cover

Roses

scent and romance – shrub and climbing kinds

Clematis

a climber for colour up walls, arches and fences

Phlox

scented, colourful clouds through high summer

Lady's mantle

soft lime-green froth that knits a border together

Cottage garden plants that do the work

The look comes from a repeating rhythm of trusted cottage garden plants: tall spires for height, a froth of soft ground cover, and airy see-through flowers that let you look through the border rather than at a wall of green. The planting plan names the full list, with how many to buy and where each goes.

From idea to a plan you can plant

Seeing the design is only half of it. When you find one you love, unlock its professional planting plan: every plant named, how many of each, exactly where it goes, and a month-by-month flowering calendar so your borders have colour from spring right through to autumn – not just the high-summer picture.

Professional garden designers often charge over £1,000 for this. Your first design is free, so you can see your own garden reimagined before you spend anything.

Questions

Good to know.

Everything people ask about cottage garden design.

How does the AI garden design work?

Upload a photo of your garden or a single border, and tell us what you'd like: refresh your borders, keeping your garden's shape, or redesign the whole space with new layout, paths and planting. Pick a style, and we generate a photorealistic redesign of your actual garden. When you love one, unlock its planting plan – every plant, how many to buy, and where each goes.

Are the plants real – can I actually buy and plant them?

Yes. Every design can become a planting plan of real, available UK plants, with quantities, each plant's mature height and spread, where it goes and a month-by-month flowering guide. The plans are built on real horticultural data and shaped by a professional gardener – not generic AI guesses – so the garden in the picture is a garden you can genuinely plant.

Do I need a special photo or camera?

No – a normal phone photo is perfect. Photograph your whole garden if it's small and simple, or one border at a time for larger or more complex gardens, where each bed has its own light and soil.

Is the first design really free, and what does it cost after?

Your first design is genuinely free, with no card required. After that, subscriptions start at £19 a month. The professional planting plan is a separate one-off you only buy if you want to make a design real.

Why does my redesign look like high summer?

We render your garden at its peak, in full flower, so you can see how lush and full it can look. It's an artist's impression, and your real garden will change through the seasons. The planting plan that comes with it includes a month-by-month flowering calendar and plants chosen for year-round interest, so there's colour and structure well beyond the summer picture.

Go deeper

More on cottage garden.

Your cottage garden is one photo away.

See it redesigned in about two minutes. The first one's on us.

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