THE COTTAGE GARDEN
This intimate and inviting garden welcomes visitors to relax under the shade of a towering magnolia and a Japanese umbrella pine tree. It exemplifies layered gardening with a design that incorporates a variety of trees, shrubs, bulbs, herbaceous perennials, annuals, and ornamental grasses. Appealing plant combinations span growing seasons. Bulbs appear in the early spring, followed by perennials and annuals in summer. Complimentary plant structures and forms add appeal in autumn and early winter.
The Cottage Garden was the first garden developed for display after the Worcester County Horticultural Society purchased the Tower Hill Farm in 1986. Situated alongside the 1740s farmhouse, a building that houses some of the Garden’s administrative offices, the Cottage Garden features plants perfect for home gardens, such as peonies, and a bearded iris that was preserved from the farmhouse’s original garden.
Highlights of the Cottage Garden include rare spring ephemerals like yellow trillium and rattlesnake orchid. When the white flowering forsythia, a spring flowering shrub, blooms the fragrance can be smelled from hundreds of feet away. A border including edibles such as ornamental vegetables, blueberries, herbs and edible flowers further celebrate the Garden’s agricultural past.
