History

Closely connected to the half-timbered house is the cottage garden. Cottage gardens are much older than gardens of the nobility and public parks. Models of these gardens have been the gardens of monasteries. There the monks could find everything they needed in the kitchen, for preparing medicine and for the decoration of the church.

Rules for creating a franconian cottage garden

It's always been the task of the farmer's wife to create and maintain the garden. For having a short way to harvest something for the meal from her garden, it's always been right next to the house. In this garden everything was planted what was needed in the kitchen: vegetables, herbs, berries and flowers. Fruit trees grew next to the garden on large meadows. The garden was encircled by a fence made of wood or stone or other natural materials and decorated with plants. Sometimes the fence was the trellis for flowers and some kind of plants. Inside the fence, the gardes were always created geometrically. A cross-shaped way divided the garden into four beds. Each of these beds were bordered by flat hedges of book or box. In the center of these gardenways you could find in a kind of roundabout a fountain or a bed with non-standard flowers. The kind of planting was always very individual. But there are several vegetables you could find in every cottage garden: cucumbers, carrots, onions, beans, potatoes, salad, leek and beetroots. Besides the vegetables, flowers were planted in such a way, that the garden bloomed all over the year. Cottage gardens were also always a green pharmacy: chamomile, sage, thym, chive and savory. And a hive should not be missed in a realy franconian cottage garden for getting sweet honey, because the people didn't know any industrial sugar.