If you’re looking for gardening inspiration, there is nothing like a wander around a typical English village where garden goals are at their zenith in the early summer months. Tall foxgloves, bushy lavender and strategically trimmed boxwoods all play key roles in creating envy-inducing floral borders. Here’s a closer look at some typical English floral borders:

This garden entrance is bursting with floral abundance, all lined up creating a skyline at the border to the gravel walkway. Classic coping stones are used to hold back the crowds of roses, lilies and grasses that compete at the garden’s boundary. A vintage street lantern provides old fashioned charm, while wooden obelisks, trees and towering foxgloves provide height. The manicured lawn provides a clean pool of light green, while the backdrop of box hedges add agrestic texture. Explosions of pinks, reds, yellows, purples and blues pop amongst the varied tones of green grasses, shrubs and trees – a true example of a vibrant English garden.

This garden uses symmetry and patterns to create a vivid, eye-catching design. A sequence of weathered wood fence posts stream around the perimeter of the garden, while carefully crafted topiary balls add smooth geometry as a template for the bundles of lavender. The garden uses an almost exclusive colour scheme of green, purple and white in consistent arrangements, further adding to the formal design of the space. A young maple tree shoots up above the colourful circlet of bold purple lavenders, smooth green topiary and cheery white shrubbery, while a duo of vintage chimney stacks are repurposed as rustic flower stands, housing wild daisies and adding more structure and charm, either side of a small walkway.

Though both gardens have starkly different approaches to design, both provide bountiful haven for bees, lots of colour, vibrancy and inspiring garden goals. See more garden designs in our ‘gardens’ board on Pinterest here, and in the widget below: