Cottage Garden Plant List

Since ripping out everything in one of my front perennial beds (I really need to name my beds, even if it's just "east 1" or "south 4"!), I've been planning dreaming about what to plant there. I do not have an unlimited budget (who does?) and I have to reuse a lot of plants that I have kicking around.

Some planting considerations that I have include a mature & ugly maple tree smack dab in the middle of my front yard. This provides some shade in the late afternoon & evening and it also means there's a LOT of roots to deal with. We also live in an older home that was built post-WW2, likely hand built by it's original owners. We've found lots of evidence in our remodeling that they used scrap bits and pieces where ever they could. There is an old stoop or something out in this particular flower bed, right in the middle under the 2 windows. It means I can't dig very deep, so no shrubs could go there. No way in heck I'm even asking Brad to rip that out. We'll just deal with it.

With the tree, sun/shade, stoop foundation under consideration, I've developed a nice plant list.

Annuals:
Cleome
Alyssum
Cosmos
Nasturtium
Love-In-A-Mist

Bulbs:
tulips
allium
daffs
Asiatic lily
Rannunculus

Herbs:
Lavender
Parsley
Borage
Germander (instead of boxwood)
Chives
Feverfew

Perennials:
Coneflower
Daisy
Sedum
False sunflower
Hollyhock
Garden Phlox
Iris
Veronica
Poppy
Joe Pye Weed
Some sort of med. tall straight grass
Salvia
Hosta
Cupid's Dart
Roise Campion

Centaurea montana

Herbaceous Peony

Monarda

Shrubs:
dwarf Forsythia
dwarf Burning Bush
Wiegala
rose of some sort (get clippings of old rose from friend's Gr Gr Grandma's garden!)
Rhododendron/Azalea

On that list I have none of the shrubs and I have most of the perennials & herbs in my yard. The annuals are all volunteers that I can transplant and the bulbs, well, shucks, I guess I'll have to order more bulbs! I know this list strays from many of the typical "cottage garden" plants, but  Delphinium & Lupine are  plants  I've struggled with, Digitalis is poisonous, so that's a no-go. Many of the plants I'll be using are "heritage" plants, or plants I've gotten from other people. I think that having plants that were gifted from someone else only play up the cottage feel of the garden.

Now that I have a plant list, next up is a layout plan. I'm working hard on that and will share it in the next week or so. What are you planting???