Cottage Garden Jigsaw Puzzle

Cottage Garden at every size

Par is the time your score is measured against at that size. The rest is measured from the picture itself: how many pieces have a near-twin by colour once it is cut.

What the picture shows

A stone cottage with a thick thatched roof fills the right half, with leaded windows, pots of geraniums on a sill and pink climbing roses round a wooden door marked Rose Cottage. A herringbone brick path curves from the bottom edge to the door. On its left stand an old wooden wheelbarrow holding a basket and gloves, and a metal watering can. Foxgloves, delphiniums, poppies, hollyhocks, lupins and lavender crowd both sides of the path. Trees and a hedge fill the top left under a cloudy sky.

Solving Cottage Garden

At 50 pieces the flowers crowd every piece, and colour sorts only some of them: about 5 pieces in 10 have a near-twin. Compared with other pictures it holds up well as it is cut smaller, because each kind of flower has a shape and colour of its own that survive at 1000 pieces. Plain pieces are rare at every size, fewer than 1 in 10.

Build the cottage first: thatch, stone wall, windows, and the door with its roses. Then the brick path from the door down to the bottom edge, with the wheelbarrow and the watering can beside it. Sort the flowers by kind: tall foxgloves on the far left, blue delphinium spikes on both sides, round orange poppies, pink and cream hollyhocks against the wall. The trees and sky in the top left are last.

Cottage Garden is the easiest flower picture from 100 pieces up, with about 4 pieces in 10 that have a near-twin at 100 pieces and 8 in 10 at 1000. At 50 pieces only Rose Garden sorts better.

More flower jigsaw puzzles

• Lavender FieldRows of lavender run to a stone farmhouse under plane trees, a hill village in the haze.
• Tulip FieldsStriped fields of red, yellow, pink and purple tulips running to a windmill.
• Rose GardenA formal rose garden with a white gazebo, a fountain, hedges and a bench.
• Sunflower FieldA sunflower field beside a muddy farm track, some heads drooping, a stone barn behind.
• Cherry Blossom PathA stone path under cherry blossom, paper lanterns, a wooden bridge and fallen petals.