Homes & Gardens has so many interesting articles, we really should steal them more often.
This pair of articles about outdated back garden trends and outdated front garden trends are nice for fertilising one’s thinking about one’s garden, its compartments, and the ancient “what I want” VS “what I, or my husband, will work or pay someone for” calculation.
Homes & Gardens is American based, so the native plants mentioned there like Echinacea need swapping. We also don’t have different climate regions like desert or subtropical, or as many front porches on our houses, but otherwise our temperate-zone gardens have enough in common to share broad designs.
Garden trends are models of “one thing done well”, and like fashion they are cyclically promoted to keep the garden industry chugging along.
But whether or not you like that fashion is what matters in your garden. Other people may try to tell you otherwise, but that is their problem.
To be a good neighbour, we should take care of our gardens, be ruthless with weeds around the perimeter between us, keep our hedges trimmed, but we don’t owe our neighbours a matching garden style as well.
If theirs are all manicured and minimalist, you can go full cottage garden blouse mountain, and vice versa.
Let’s pour ourselves a beverage or two while Chat GPT summarises the main points from those Outdated Garden Trends articles for me, which is great because it really frees me up to drink at work.
Front Garden Inspiration
Replacing the boring, costly front lawn
Lawns are a plague upon The Land, and must be destroyed, lest Albion perish.
That is a moderate position these days among fresh garden designers, who bring back gloriously low maintenance mulched flowerbeds, and pathways.
Killing your lawn is a life affirming choice for many people, especially popular with those turning their gardens into havens for Britain’s 5,718 or so native plants, listed here by inaturalist.org.
Choosing less & more porous hardscaping, with no cheap plastic edging
Concrete is great stuff, some of my best friends are concrete, don’t get me wrong, but there is a modern trend to building new houses with nothing but concrete out front.
Gravel is pretty, scrunchy, and whenever you need a smooth pebble to rub against your cheek, there it is. Compared to concrete, it’s a light job to adjust a gravel driveway as your requirements change.
And for the love of all things pretty, use anything except plastic to define edges along lawns, beds, and paths.
Choosing less formal design, with more natural looking shrubs, and easy on the ornamental grasses!
Formal gardens and tightly clipped hedges are more work. Let the shrubbery grow, trim it once per year, twice for roses, job done.
I think overuse of ornamental grasses is more of an American thing, however, it’s far from unknown here, wherever grand dreams of diverse, enchanting Prairie Planting end up as “plant a big, tall grass with a small, cute one. Take the money, run.”
Freshen up the porch, picking the colour scheme you like over the ordinary, safe choices
Front porches are a much bigger deal in America, we tend not to have them, but the design point is the same: the front of your house is a major design choice, and unless you are contractually obliged to choose magnolia, you are not contractually obliged to choose magnolia.
Back Garden Inspiration
Modern, contrived & minimal is out, wild, native-rich maximalist designs are in
Gardens are most beautiful when packed with plants and wildlife. Minimalist designs have their advantages with being low maintenance (apart from mowing lawns), but they rarely rise to the level of being truly beautiful: too sterile.
Native plants tend to be cheap, good for wildlife, very reliable even in poor conditions, and when interplanted with a healthy minority of more exciting looking non-natives, there is no sacrifice made in ornamental value.
By the way, we include English Lavender as native: no one has the energy to argue any more.
Cover crops / Green manure gaining popularity
Rather than leave bare soil overwinter or cover it with unsightly plastic, more gardeners are using cover crops like a farmer on their vegetable beds, and when digging over an area one year to plant in the next.
Sowing seeds is so cool, why miss a chance?
Drought tolerant plants requested more each year
Urban areas, where irrigation is vital, are expanding, and tap water does not get cheaper, both of which increase demand for plants that do well in dry conditions.
Fancier outdoor kitchens?
Outdoor kitchens specifically are more of an American thing in their warmer states: Britain is too cold, windy, and rainy for people to want lavish outdoor kitchens.
However, grills are selling well, and nicer, more solid gazebos with plush comfy seating and smarter fittings are on the rise, in no small part due to people working from home more.
