Bishy Barnabee’s Cottage Garden

Cottage Garden Seeds

The timeless favourites that built the cottage garden look

Quick picks
Sow this monthSpring favouritesCut flowersFor the vasePollinatorsBees and butterfliesHardy annualsAutumn-sow readyEasy to growFirst-time friendlyUnder £2.50Stock up favourites
120 products
Calendula Neon by Bishy Barnabees Cottage Garden Ltd displays vivid electric-orange blooms amid lush green leaves, creating a stunning sunlit display. This eye-catching flower is also edible.
Annual

Calendula Neon

Densely double ruffled heads in tangerine and deep…

Sow: Mar–May · Sep–Oct
£2.50 View
Close-up of delicate white Corncockle Bianca flowers by Bishy Barnabees Cottage Garden Ltd, featuring thin green stems in a lush garden with more white blooms, greenery, and a few orange flowers in the background.
Annual

Corncockle Bianca

The pure white form of Britain's lost cornfield flower

Sow: Mar–May · Sep
£2.35 View
A close-up of a Bishy Barnabees Cottage Garden Cosmos Fizzy Rose flower with a long stem, shot from below against a blue sky with scattered clouds and blurred green trees in the background.
Annual

Cosmos Fizzy Rose

Semi-double blooms in soft pale mauve-pink, each petal…

Sow: Mar–Jun
£2.20 View
The Cosmos Purity by Bishy Barnabees Cottage Garden features a single white bloom with a yellow center, standing out against green foliage—ideal for moon gardens or adding stunning white flowers to your cutting garden.
Annual

Cosmos Purity

Broad silky white petals around a small gold…

Sow: Mar–Jun
£2.40 View
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Growing cottage garden classics — your questions answered

What makes a flower a cottage garden classic?

Cottage garden classics are the informal, abundant, self-seeding flowers that filled English country gardens long before bedding-out came into fashion. Think foxgloves, hollyhocks, larkspur, nigella, and cornflowers — flowers grown for their charm and forgiveness rather than uniformity. They mix happily, draw pollinators, and reseed themselves into the cracks of paths and borders.

How do I create a relaxed cottage garden look?

Plant in groups of odd numbers, mix heights deliberately (tall spires at the back, mounding shapes in the middle, low spreading edges at the front), and resist the urge to space everything evenly. Allow self-seeders to do their own thing. The cottage garden look is built from layered abundance, not order — small drifts of many species rather than blocks of a few.

Which classics should I sow first?

For instant cottage garden charm, start with cornflowers, calendula, nigella (love-in-a-mist), and cosmos — all easy from direct-sown seed and flowering within ten to twelve weeks. Add foxgloves and hollyhocks the year after; these are biennials that flower in their second summer, and once established they self-seed for years to come.

Will they come back next year?

Most cottage garden classics will self-seed reliably if you leave a few spent seed heads on the plant in late summer. You will often get drifts of seedlings the following spring — exactly the natural-looking effect that defines the style. A gentle hand with the hoe in spring is the only weeding skill required.