By Michele Day
Enquirer contributor

They all had the same assignment: Create a cottage garden. But every designer involved with the Cincinnati Home & Garden Show, opening next Saturday at the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center, downtown, must have consulted a different dictionary to define the term.

For one, a cottage garden means masses of sunflowers and roses surrounding a French country cottage.

For another, it's hostas and coral bells along a babbling brook in the woods.

For yet another, it's salvias and daffodils flowing from containers amid smoking chimney pots on an urban rooftop.

"One thing about cottage gardening is it's very open for interpretation," says Jim Hansel, director of horticulture for the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati.

Historically, the cottage gardens developed in England during the 18th and 19th centuries were small gardens, generally less than a quarter acre, Hansel says. They were densely planted with vegetables, herbs, fruits and, least important at the time, flowers.

From a design perspective, cottage gardens always have had few rules.

COTTAGE GARDEN PLANTS

Annuals Forget-me-not Tobacco plant Snapdragon Nasturtium Love-in-a-mist Biannuals Foxglove Cardoon Hollyhock Angelica Silver sage Perennials Peony Lady's mantle Poppy Salvia Phlox Shrubs Hydrangea Lilac Sweet mock orange Weigela Korean spice viburnum Source: Jim Hansel, director of horticulture, Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati

IF YOU GO

What: 35th annual Fifth Third Bank Cincinnati Home & Garden Show, presented by GMC. When: 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. next Saturday and Feb. 15, 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Feb. 9 and 16; 5-9 p.m. Feb. 11 and 13 and noon-9 p.m. Feb. 12 and 14. Where: Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center, downtown. Cost: $10; children 13 and under $3. Discount adult tickets ($7) at Fifth Third Bank locations through Friday. Miscellaneous: The show will include a Kitchen, Bath and Design Show; Summer Living Pavilion, presented by Trane; Building and Remodeling Promenade, presented by Culligan; Fine Furnishings Promenade; and Cincinnati Bell Technology Pavilion. The Junior League Garden Market, featuring more than 100 vendors, will be open Feb. 13-16 only. Proceeds from the market will benefit the Junior League's educational and charitable programs. Information: 281-0022; Web site.

"In a cottage garden, beauty is in the eye of the beholder," Hansel says. "They're very personal gardens, an extension of the grower's idea of aesthetics. They're generally very intimate gardens, close to the house or living space. And the color is not grouped by an ordered system or arrangement. People can throw the color wheel aside and do what they like."

Nevertheless, original cottage gardens required much maintenance, Hansel says.

"Many of the plants they used are vigorous growers. That requires a lot of division and moving things around."

Densely planted

Today, low maintenance is one of the clear gardening trends, but that doesn't mean cottage gardens are out of style, Hansel says.

The shrinking lots accompanying today's homes and condominiums are ideal for the compact and densely planted elements of the cottage look, he says. And like the designers at the Home & Garden Show, many gardeners are adapting characteristics of the cottage style to 21st-century American landscapes.

Here are some of the about 20 cottage adaptations you'll see at the show.

In Steve Lichtenberg's mind, nothing says cottage garden like a cottage. The owner of Lichtenberg Landscaping in Mason started the design for his traditional French country garden with construction of a small cottage faÁade. It features a stone and stucco finish, tile roof and brilliant blue shutters and door. A stone terrace and pathways extend from the back of the country cottage and a wide array of flowers, including roses and sunflowers, surround the terrace.

A cottage is not a cottage garden necessity, says Linda Kreidler, owner of Kreidler Design/Pairi-Daeza in Anderson Township. "I went with the thought that the cottage garden doesn't have to be in England or out on a farm," she says. "It can be taken into a rather contradictory situation and still be executed and enjoyed."

Her "contradictory" setting is the rooftop of a renovated townhouse. The backdrop is the office towers of Cincinnati's skyline; and the exhibit includes a putting green provided by Sport Court of Cincinnati.

Kreidler captures the mood of a cottage garden by filling pots and other containers with an abundance of plants in widely varied heights, styles and colors - spires of red salvias, clusters of yellow daffodils, shrubs of red roses.

"I see a cottage garden as lots and lots of color," she says.

Bob Petracco, owner of Brentwood Landscape and Supply in Alexandria, has a different view. He sees cottage style in a single hue - white.

"It's a real elegant look and a real clean look," he says. "It's a nice way to see the designs and bones of a garden without all the color to distract from that." Petracco concedes that most people picture a cottage garden as a vivid mass of multicolored flowers, but he says his garden still fits the theme.

"To me, a cottage garden is just the different textures, mixed styles and types of plants," he says. "It also should create sort of an intimate space, almost another outdoor room around the house."

His exhibit will accomplish that with flagstone pathways, stone walls and a brick patio. The setting for Brentwood's all-white cottage garden will be the yard of a typical suburban house. "We want to show what you can do to your property to give it a much more interesting, much more designed look," Petracco says. "Anybody can have a cottage garden, and really you don't have to spend a fortune to do it."

Settings are no more limited than colors in a cottage garden. Tom Craven, owner of Craven Landscape Architecture in Evendale, set his garden in the woods. He'll use a variety of shade plants with interesting foliage as well as flowers along a stone path that runs to a stone bridge over a brook.

"To me, a cottage garden usually means more flowers," Craven says. He chose plants that flower for a long time and have interesting foliage - so that the garden will remain attractive in all seasons.

Bard Nurseries and Landscaping in Amelia also will be going for an all-season garden, using more than 60 varieties of plants - ornamental grasses to flowering crab trees and hollies - says Clint Bard Jr., vice president.

But Bard's setting will be more rural America, with an arbor and swing setting the tone.

Bard says his employees had different opinions on what a cottage garden should be. "The only thing everybody seemed to agree on was more of the natural look, which is something a lot of people are leaning toward today," he says. That untamed feature of cottage gardening - as opposed to the traditional row of well-manicured shrubbery along the front of a house - is one aspect of cottage gardens that many designers mentioned as growing in popularity.

Several included the idea of an outdoor living space, sort of an extension of the home.

"A cottage garden is a small garden that entices people to go outdoors," says Andy Perrino, owner of Perrino Landscape in Linwood. "It should have a nice warm, almost outdoor room feel with lots of color and lots of perennials."

He will enclose his display of colorful daffodils, dogwoods and crab apples within a brick wall to create a more intimate space. Geoff Egbers, owner of Egbers Land Design in Boone County, also will use a brick wall, along with wrought-iron fencing and stonework to develop an outdoor room with the feel of Charleston, S.C.

"People want to have a place where they can sit and be among the flowers, to see the butterflies and smell the roses," he says.

Mona Shaw, a designer for LTD Landscapes of Milford, will add a pergola, a wooden overhead structure, to create a room effect in her garden, based on the poem "When I am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple."

In keeping with the whimsical theme, the pergola will be painted purple, and the surrounding flowers, including hydrangeas, azaleas and geraniums, will be shades of purple, as well. Yes, it's a bit off the traditional cottage garden path, but this, too, is a cottage garden, Shaw says. "With the cottage garden, you're looking for a lot of plant materials to give a layering effect," she says. For her, the defining characteristics of a cottage garden are flowing, full and informal.

Shaw echoes some of Hansel's thoughts about the personal nature of cottage gardens. In her own landscape, she follows the cottage tradition of incorporating plants with personal histories into the design.

She's particularly sentimental about plants shared by members of garden clubs.

"Many of those ladies have passed away now, but we still have their plants in our cottage garden," she says.

The Civic Garden Center (CGC) exhibit won't feature heirloom plants, but it will adhere to the neighbor-sharing-with-neighbor tradition of cottage gardening. Its design is a replica of the community gardens that the center sponsors throughout Greater Cincinnati.

Like the original cottage gardens of Europe, the CGC garden will focus on edible plants, such as peas, beans, lettuce and tomatoes. Mixed in will be roses and other flowers for color and decoration.

"Community gardens take on a strong cottage garden theme in that every square inch of a community garden is used for beauty or food," Hansel says.

CGC staff will be available to advise visitors on how to create a successful community garden.

"The fun thing about cottage gardens is everyone can do it and you don't have to be a landscape architect," Hansel says. "It's a very approachable form of gardening."

The Garden Web, a Web site on gardening, sponsors a forum for cottage garden enthusiasts.