Hi Janie ~ If I were to say that a cottage garden can contain a wildflower garden but a wildflower garden is just that, would it make any sense? A cottage garden is usually a collection of different types of plants including vegies, trees, herbs, flowers, Heritage flowers, grasses, and wildflowers. Sort of a mishmash of plantings that were grown all together originally because of limited space and a none formal setting. A style of gardening if you will. A wildflower garden is often a meadow or large expanse of garden with native perennials and grasses.

Planting in drifts means pretty much what you said. A "drift" of the same plant. Sometimes drifts are planted in different colors of flowers or plants of the same variety. It looks really awesome when they are mature and form a "drift". :) IMO

Ginny

Ginny - Thanks for the great description!

Isn't a wildflower garden in unimproved soil?

Corrine

When I think of wildflowers, I think of those which we like to see in the wild but not usually in the garden, like chicory, goldenrod, queen anne's lace, pokeweed, thistles, may apples, u know, stuff that's too exuberant to control - too wild - even if it is a native. To me, wildflower garden usually means a pretty much untended (wild) area, except maybe to remove unwanted invaders and to add new plants, with probably no mulching or amending. Honalee, I totally agree wildflower garden should usually apply to a large area.

Cottage gardens look wild because of their lack of formality, symmetry, and rows, but usually contain mostly the more well-behaved plants, not the wild ones.

I think of drifts as patches, like those of a quilt, with some larger and some smaller. Drifts can keep a garden from looking like a museum with exhibits (here are *the* daisies, here are *the* coneflowers.) The larger your yard, the larger the drifts can/should be. It takes a pretty big mass of something to see from a moving car. Of course that's not the only view that's important, but it is how it will be seen most by everyone except your family and immediate neighbors. Choosing 2 or 3 favorites to drift heavily throughout your plantings make the whole property a cohesive unit. You can use the same plant or, even better, the same color in several plants that bloom at different times to maintain your "backbone" color.

I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about, but I think of a drift of flowers as a big grouping of the same flower that tends to be elongated, as though it were flowing through the garden. I may think this way because I live in the north where snow drifts are pretty common from December through March. They always form such flowing white sculptured-looking forms.

ThinMan

The Keukenhof Gardens in Holland use a lot of drifts in their plantings, their rivers of Muscari are gorgeous.

Annette

Here is a link that might be useful: Keukenhof Gardens

I don't know about everyone else...but my cottage garden helps my wildflowers look more at home. Since many of my wildflowers are also known as weeds...the cottage garden makes them look like they belong and compliment the other plants.

Here's a picture from last month, as the garden is winding down, but this little rose is about 1" across and the little daisy flowers are weeds. The dry flowers is a daisy, but you can also see a little wormwood peeking through a few of the flowers. It grows everywhere, but a little bit in the garden is a nice contrast, with the blue-green leaves. {{gwi:764022}}From Lavender's Garden