Mixed Culture Garden vs Mono Culture Garden

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One of the lessons that the people learned was that it is better to mix crops, be it vegetables or flowers. A lot of different types of crops were likely to provide an overall better harvest, or, in the case of flowers, a better show, than planting larger areas of just a few. Concentration on one crop could spell disaster.
The classic example of this was the total reliance on the potato as the food crop in Ireland in the mid- nineteenth century. Potato blight swept the country for several years running, causing a great famine in which nearly two million people either died or emigrated to avoid its effects.
The same thing can happen in the flower garden. Concentrate all your Phlox, for example, in one border and trouble is liable to ensue. If nematodes arrive they will quickly build up into vast numbers and distort and kill the plants, preventing you from reusing that ground for Phlox again for several years. On the other hand, Phlox spread around the garden, separated by other plants, means the chances are that if one clump is attacked the others will escape harm.
Monocultures, or a concentration of one crop, allow pests or diseases to multiply rapidly once they get hold, resulting in the reliance on pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals to control the condition. (If indeed control is possible; in some cases, particularly with viral infections, there is still no adequate chemical control.)
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A mixed culture has many advantages. One of the main ones is that while there are liable to be more different types of pests in such a garden, there are also going to be more predators. No one pest is likely to build up into unmanageable proportions. For example, even in a had outbreak of aphids, which seems to like more different host plants than most other insects, it rarely gets out of hand in a truly mixed garden, because there always seem to be enough ladybugs, lacewings, hoverfly(also known as syphid flies and flower flies), and other insects which keep the infestation under control.
On the other hand, in a garden devoted to just roses, for example, or a large area assigned to broad beans, the greenfly or black fly could easily gain the upper hand if insecticide is not used.
Cottagers did not have chemicals readily available; they had to deal with pests in other ways. One way was to mix their plantings. Although this was a practical solution to a real problem, as with so many simple techniques it ended up having other advantages as well; for this reason the cottage garden is probably the most attractive of all gardening styles.