Creating a cottage garden, with Amy Shore

The good life  

Scroll through Amy’s feed and it quickly becomes clear why so many choose to follow her day-to-day antics in the quaint and characterful cottage garden she calls her ‘happy place’. It’s wholesome and bursting with the vibrant hues of new growth and fistfuls of vegetables and eggs, with a good smattering of chickens, friendly robins and on-the-go projects to boot. It’s a nod to the good life and the sort of slow living that almost jars with what we’re used to seeing online nowadays.   

“The main aspect of my garden, where I spend the most time, is the vegetable patch,” Amy explained, setting off on a virtual tour. “It’s where I have my raised beds. There are gates at either end, joined by a small picket fence, next to which sits my greenhouse and the potting shed.   

“If you were to imagine a Peter Rabbit veg plot, you’d be along the right lines,” she said as she went on to describe the patch of lawn with established beds and, closer to the house, the patio area where she grows more salads and herbs.  

“There’s no real cohesive theme to the colour or approach,” she was quick to point out. “It is just what brings me joy, but also what’s good for the bees and the space in question.”  

Amy’s cottage gardening tips  

“It’s just what brings me joy.” I liked that. And as the conversation unfolded, I realised that this simple criterion applied to whatever happens in Amy’s garden, from the plants she chooses to grow to the breeds of chicken she allows to roam free in her parcel of paradise.  

It’s an approach that has kept Amy captivated from the off. “I get bored easily,” she admitted, “but gardening is the exception. There’s always a new seed to sow, or a new variety of veg to try, and I love to be creative and experiment.”  

Trial and error is, in Amy’s book, something to be embraced. “Unless you have the time, vision and budget to completely start from scratch – as in gut a place and redesign it – to an extent you have to work with what you’ve got and just give things a go!” she said.  

I was keen to press Amy for a few more snippets of advice – the hard-earned sort she might share with the scores of people who now contact her online each week.  

“I tend to think about how I will spend time in a particular space and then see what the light does there throughout the day,” she said. “I don’t call myself a garden designer by any means, but I think about the colours I want, and I try to plan for different areas. I’ll always think about what plants I really like before ripping anything up and starting again, too.”  

This year, Amy is growing more flowers than she ever has done. “I have lots of dahlias going in, and I love nasturtiums and marigolds. Planting a mixture of flowers and vegetables looks great and helps the pollinators,” she added.  

Unsurprisingly, one of the most common questions Amy is asked online relates to simply getting started – ‘how and where do I start in my garden?’. She’s modest enough to remind me that she’s no expert but, reflecting on her own experience and what has worked for her, she suggests starting small and growing something easy that you really enjoy looking at or eating.  

“When you first start out in gardening, it can be quite intimidating for some people as there’s just so much choice,” Amy added. “Look in your salad drawer in your fridge and buy some seeds for those things. Start there. If you can grow what you love to eat, you’re onto a winner.”  

You don’t have to commit to a big area, either. “At the outset, why not just have one raised bed or one small planter outside your kitchen door with some lettuces and a few herbs in it?” Amy suggested. “It doesn’t have to be a huge commitment from the off.”  

She chuckled. “People should know that it’s a slippery slope, though! When you reap the rewards – when you pick that first tomato or cucumber from a seed that you’ve sown yourself – there’s some sort of tonic in that, and you will find yourself needing to do more of it. Growing your own food is so addictive! Which leads straight on to the next thing I learned early on: start a piggy bank!”   

A garden without chickens is...  

Nine out of 10 people asked to describe the rural idyll would surely utter something about chickens. Veg gardens and chicken coops kind of go together. Why stop at carrots and courgettes when you can have your own golden-yolkers, too?  

Indeed, the 10 hens that have free reign in Amy’s garden bring her as much joy, she admits, as her raised beds. They’re a big hit for her online as well.   

“I had a couple of chickens when I was younger, and as soon as we moved into a place suited to keeping chickens, it was something we wanted to do,” she told me.  

“Initially, when we first moved into the cottage in 2015, we bought three cream legbars from someone just down the road. The following week I was away with work and returned to find our flock had doubled in size. My husband had enjoyed watching them so much that he’d been and collected three more!  

“The legbars are quite big chickens, very calm and friendly, and they lay beautiful eggs with blue-green shells. We have just two of those now. Then we have eight pekin bantams, which are just the funniest things to watch. They’re a law unto themselves and often lay eggs in my raised beds. I have to make sure anything edible in the plot is netted so they don’t beat me to it. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”  

Ten is about the perfect number, Amy reckons, to keep the egg drawer full and have a few extra to give away to friends and family.   

“It’s a nice feeling to share produce you’ve grown yourself, with eggs from chickens that have lived in the very same garden,” pondered Amy as the tour came to an end. A close second, I imagined, to having a larder fully stocked with everything from kale to cucumbers grown just yards from the kitchen window.

To watch the videos Amy has produced for Schöffel Country in her garden recently, please visit our Instagram page.