With global warming at the top of the news agenda, most of the garden trends identified this year are dictated by our increasing concerns for the environment. A more relaxed garden aesthetic is becoming commonplace, with areas left unmanicured to attract insects and other wildlife, and we are exploring ways to be more eco-friendly and sustainable both in our gardening practices and in design.
Gardening in gravel, sand or rubble
Hardcore gardening, as it has become known, is a burgeoning movement among designers and gardeners. A layer of crushed rubble (or any sort of non-toxic hardcore), sand or gravel is laid over the top of the soil to provide an impoverished medium in which your plants will grow. Diversity is the key point here. Counter-intuitively, a wider range of plants can thrive in this environment because thuggish weeds that need lots of nutrients will not take hold. You just have to select the right plants in the first instance - typically drought-tolerant, Mediterranean type species that will survive with very little water and maintenance. Examples of this type of garden are popping up everywhere, from the Walled Garden at Knepp Castle, designed by Tom Stuart Smith, to the private gardens of designers such as Dan Pearson and Sarah Price. In a year of heavy rain, these gardens may appear less resilient. But the plants will have a much better chance of survival than if they were planted in a traditional herbaceous border with rich soil as they will be smaller and tougher than their counterparts. Crucially the medium they are planted in is extremely free-draining, making them less likely to succumb to cold and wet conditions.
Building wildlife habitats into our gardens
Increasingly we are viewing our gardens as spaces not only for us as human beings but for the wildlife around us too. Garden designers are building wildlife habitats into the infrastructure of the garden - in planters, sculptures and features as simple as a log wall or bee hotel. Gardener John Little is passionate about attracting more insects into the garden: ‘Plants are a food source for the insects that you want to attract, but you also need to think about the structures in a garden – you need to create niches and different habitats as breeding spaces’. This structure could be as simple as a bank of sand for bees to nest in, or a pile of logs left to slowly decompose. John makes signage and artworks with bee nesting holes incorporated, and also creates perforated steel planters designed to be filled with sand to provide nesting space for bees.
Growing perennial vegetables and edimentals
Most of the traditional vegetables we grow in the garden are annuals that we sow and plant each year, from runner beans and broccoli to potatoes and salad leaves. But there is an increasing interest in lower maintenance perennial vegetables such as Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus and globe artichokes, which will return year after year. More unusual perennial veg are popping up too, from scorzonera and skirret to sea kale and samphire. With deeper root systems than annuals, these crops are more resilient than others, requiring less water and less time. The term ‘edimental’ is becoming more widely used, denoting a crop that is both edible and ornamental, including edible flowers, shrubs or trees which can be grown in traditional borders, or in a permaculture garden.
Forest gardens
In larger plots, forest gardens are increasingly popular, mixing trees and edible crops in a productive system that benefits from the below-ground mycelium network of the trees. The trees can also be coppiced for woodchip to be used as a mulch, meaning that the garden needs little nutrient input from elsewhere. A new book called Silvohorticulture by Andy Dibben and Ben Raskin, recently published by Chelsea Green, provides all the information you need.
Cottagecore
The English cottage garden is having a revival, but reinterpreted for the 21st century. The crux of the cottage garden has always been the broad mix of plants that are grown, with traditional cottage garden flowers grown alongside fruit bushes, herbs and veg. The advantage of this is the diversity of plants that can be squeezed into a small area, and we are embracing this to bring more insect life into our gardens. Big drifts of one type of plant are out, and a more jumbled, meadow-like planting style is in. Simple, easy-to-grow flowers that remind us of nature are suddenly more popular than artificial-looking bedding plants, and we are learning about the benefits of single flowers rather than hybridised doubles for pollinators. Old fashioned hollyhocks, lavender, roses, foxgloves and phlox are on everyone’s planting lists, incorporated into urban plots as well as larger country gardens.
Using recycled materials
While planting is getting wilder, there is also a drive to lower the carbon footprint of our gardens with the hard materials used to build them and the structures within the gardens. Recycled or repurposed materials are widely used, including waste materials that would otherwise be going into landfill, such as crushed concrete, glass or bathroomware, used as paths or mulches. Designers are seeking out innovative materials to work with including cork, palm leaves and mycelium. Tom Massey is using mycelium panels in a pavilion he has designed for the Avanade Intelligent Garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, while Allon Hoskin and Robert Beaudin go a step further and use recycled waste from last year’s show in their mycelium-bound blocks for a feature wall in the Pathway Garden.
Growing from seed
People are rediscovering the therapeutic value of practical gardening, and more of us are growing plants from seed for the satisfaction and joy it can bring. The cost of plants has risen exponentially, so growing your own flowers from seed is suddenly very attractive. From herbs such as parsley and basil to easy annuals like marigolds, cosmos and sunflowers, the range of varieties you can grow from seed is mind-blowing, and contrary to what many of us believe, growing most flowers from seed is really easy. All you need is a bag of compost and a seed tray or two, a warm windowsill, and an outdoor space to fill with flowers.
