Progress in our coastal woodland cottage backyard

We’re entering our fifth summer here. How can that even be? I had to count it four times on my hand, and it still doesn’t feel right! Somehow time has flown by.

I still feel like there’s so much to be done, so I’m glad we are planning to stay in this house a long time. We definitely need more time here for the plants!

Today I’ll share some of our late spring backyard progress (and our plant struggles!).

I decided I’m going to call this our Coastal Woodland Cottage Garden, I’ll explain more about this below. :)

These photos were taken just a few weeks ago, but I noticed today that some plants are starting to fill in more now so I’ll have to do a follow up.

Tiny Cottage, Troubles and Mishaps

It all began with the addition of The Tiny Cottage for my parents.

The yard was all torn up after the construction, so it would’ve been really nice to hire landscapers to do the whole backyard! But other than the decks (which the contractors built), we decided to just work on the rest of it ourselves.

We’ve always enjoyed creating little flagstone paths, picking out plants and creating cottage gardens, so it didn’t seem like that would be too difficult here.

But getting plants to thrive here has been more challenging than we expected. Yet, we are determined!

We planted plants we thought would work but they didn’t, and then replaced them with different ones that also struggled. And we had a few other challenges and mishaps like trees falling down (that we didn’t even plant!) along the way.

But even though it will take more time, I think we’re finally figuring some things out.

We thought working on a yard this small would be easy! But that was definitely not the case. :)

At times it felt like we went backwards more than we went forward.

And while we still haven’t really figured out all of the plants, I thought you might enjoy a little progress report.

This may be a long one, so you might want to grab your tea or coffee :)

Embracing a Coastal Woodland Garden

One of the reasons I’ve decided this will be a Coastal Woodland Cottage Garden is because that’s what this space wanted to be all along.

Coastal Woodland makes sense, as we actually are surrounded by the forest and sea.

The scent of pine and sea in the air. Mossy stones. Ferns. Hydrangeas. Herbs. Hosta. Astilbe. Climbing vines.

Rather than a perfectly manicured garden, i love that it feels more relaxed and natural, with the winding paths, pine needles scattered around, layers of green, blooms, and little tucked-away places to sit.

Flagstone paths and bridges

My husband put in a flagstone patio area and path all around the yard, with little bridges to go over some French drains to make it a fun adventure back here for the grandkids (we didn’t even have grandkids at the time!) plus it’s functional for anyone gardening, too. The bridges come in a kit that you build.

I guess you can’t really see the bridges much in these photos, so I’ll have to take more photos once summer gets going so you can see.

One woodland cottage thing I want to do soon is to make fairy gardens for the little ones to find!

I’ve made them in the past and always dreamed of the day I would BE a grandma who did things like making fairy gardens, so it’s time.

My parents have added so much character around The Tiny Cottage.

Their awning, the cottage sign on the door, the flowers in the post box! The bird houses, a fountain, window boxes …

All of the little details that come together together over time. I’ll share more of those little details another time.

Trees, roots, needles + rocks

We had to have the fire pit moved away from the house to make room for the addition.

So my dad has worked on the fire pit side of the yard to get it set up. He put some stacked pavers around the fire pit and some of the planting areas to keep dirt from washing down onto the patio.

There are a lot of rock and tree roots — which has made things more difficult.

We even lost some trees that were here before we moved in!

One really tall tree actually fell over in the middle of the night last fall!

It fell across the whole yard onto the Tiny Cottage deck and was maybe an inch from hitting the window, but thankfully no one was in its path and it didn’t damage anything.

Critters, plant eaters + trellises

I’d say this backyard has reminded us that we are definitely not master gardeners. LOL!

In our defense, we also never before had caterpillars (which thankfully didn’t return this year) or deer visiting to make a feast out of our plants.

I’d like to have a fence installed down the road, but my parents came up with a clever but temporary lattice situation to help (well, mostly) keep the deer out.

There was a mama and two darling little fawns in here the other day, though, so they still find their way in!

We’re just trying whatever we can to outsmart them at this point to give our plants a chance.

We’ve also been learning what plants deer like and what they don’t, so we can make better choices going forward. After learning that they tend to not bother peonies, I’m more excited now to work on our front yard!

Shade plants & moss for a woodland garden

We’re technically in gardening zone 8b, the same as our last home, but we’ve decided our backyard must have a little microclimate of its own.

A neighbor who lives on the same side of the street said she had struggled for years with her backyard, too, and she decided to go for shade plants, thinking they will be more likely to thrive.

Even though we do get nice sun across the middle of the yard from morning to late afternoon this time of year, we decided that was good advice.

A shady woodland garden! Last year and this year we’ve planted hostas, hydrangea, Astilbe, sweet woodruff, camellia, ferns and a few others that seem to be filling in more this year. My husband keeps saying we don’t have room for more plants, but I think there is always room for a few more. I love going to the local garden nursery, so I’m sure there’s more room :).

One thing that has happened is our trees drop lots of pine needles. At first I didn’t like that they landed all over the place, but I”m embracing it now. I think it definitely gives it a more woodland look.

I think it’s often better to go with what works, rather than fighting it.

Moss between flagstones

Speaking of embracing the woodland look, we got moss for our flagstone path last spring after my Corsican mint didn’t make it through winter. Surely moss will be happy since it grows naturally here, right? Well, it’s still alive so we’re hoping with more time it’ll grow all over like we imagined it!

Funny thing is my Corsican mint has now started to return in small patches, so I guess it’s a race to see which does better. We’ve planted a few things as “experiments” so it’s kind of fun to see what will take off.

Cottage Garden Flowers

For a touch of old fashioned cottage garden charm, we planted Eden climbing roses; I originally wanted to put them on the side of the house but decided I’d plant them around our French doors — I thought they’d be safer from the deer up on my deck.

These roses were one of the first plants we added as I was in a hurry to get them established within a few years (we have a hole for them in the deck so they are actually planted in the ground).

They were starting to bloom when I took these photos and so pretty! I think they’ve filled out a lot more since I took this photo, too, so we’ll see how it goes this year. I still think I probably should’ve planted them on the side of the house instead where they’d have more room to spread out (and just risked the deer). We have roses in our front yard and the deer only chomp the leaves at the bottom, the top is full of roses!

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes but I might move them and if I do, I’d try a softer vine on the deck.

This is the side of the house where I’ve thought about putting the climbing roses, these plants are happy as can be here!

So there you have it, our coastal woodland cottage backyard in spring.

There’s more I can show you, so I’ll return to share more this summer.

Do you like to garden? And are we the only ones who have struggled with plants? :)