Ask ten English gardeners to define an English cottage garden, and you will receive 10 definitions. It is not so much WHAT the English plant, but WHERE they plant which gives a garden the "English" look. Every inch of soil is home to a plant - a perennial, bulb, annual or herb. Containers of all shapes and sizes are filled with colorful blooms and placed strategically around the property. Walls, fences, arbors and trellises are adorned with climbing roses and vines, and at every turn, around every bend, vignettes of cheerful plants exalts the senses. For the cottage gardener, the emphasis is on the pleasure of selecting and growing plants, and enrapturing in their structure, flowers and fragrance, rather than maintaining ubiquitous and unimaginative foundation plantings. Although cottage gardens are sometimes carefully planned, it is the confusion and profusion of blooms and textures which denotes the essence of the English garden. Mature plants intermesh, boundaries become less defined and the bed transforms into a changing palette of colors and textures and varying heights.