Specialty Gardening: Giving up on a Cottage Garden, 1 by mjsponies

mjsponies wrote:
I've just about given up on the "Cottage Garden' idea here...we've got 11 acres, with about 3 1/2 being "yard". We planted an area about 12x20 near our entrance gate, Blanket flower, Coreopsis, and Coneflowers as the anchor plants, then the "plan" was to free sow annual's like Zinnia's and Cosmos, a few other odds and ends of mixed seeds, with the thought they would reseed. Well, this is the second year, and again, the grass and weeds just end up crowing everything out instead of the other way around. I have not mulched that area,( in hopes that plants could reseed themselves) which for most of the others we use weed cloth or very heavy mulch. Before I end up tearing the whole thing out ( there are at least 20 Blanket flower/coreopsis plants in there) any suggestions. I'm just over trying to keep that disaster weeded. I see pics of the cottage garden's and think they are so pretty and supposed to be easily maintained.........but I don't think so in Florida !
here's a pic before the weeds/grass got out of control from last year. I didn't even bother with a pic this year.
Thanks
mj