House & Garden UK Garden Editor Clare Foster tests the pulse of the garden design world to see what’s trending this year and finds that designers and their clients are tuning in to an increasingly wild aesthetic.
Regenerative gardening
We have all been thinking about how to garden in a more sustainable way for some time - using less water, chemicals and artificial materials and more recycled, local materials and biodiverse planting. Our eye is adapting and becoming more accustomed to a wilder, less manicured aesthetic as we create plant-filled, wildlife-friendly gardens.
But with an increasing urgency to the environmental crisis, there is a subtle shift towards an even more regenerative approach. Starting from the soil upwards, we are looking at gardens as entire ecosystems supporting an array of different creatures and insects, and gardening in a gentler, less intrusive way to restore existing ecosystems. With more people interested in this style of gardening, designers will be looking at ways to incorporate more plants into a space in ever more inventive ways.
Edible gardens
Growing your own food is still very much on the up as people try to reduce their carbon footprint. People still grow vegetables in the traditional way in raised beds but more and more of us are using the popular no-dig method pioneered by Charles Dowding, which saves time and produces great yields. Moving away from tradition, edible plants are increasingly being incorporated into borders or containers to save space. Those with more space to play with are turning to traditional practices such as forest gardening or permaculture to grow food in sustainable ecosystems, sometimes creating hybrid systems that draw in methods from different global practices.
Boosting biodiversity
Yesterday’s gravel gardens are morphing into sand, concrete and rubble gardens. It may sound crazy, but these low-nutrient substrates promote a much wider diversity of flora and therefore insect life. This is because the traditional, enriched soil that we have always wanted in our gardens feeds not only the plants we want but the weeds too. Nettles, docks and other pernicious weeds thrive on these high-nitrogen soils, providing competition for the other species that might otherwise arrive. A rich soil also promotes masses of growth in the plants that we do want to survive - but this means that they also need more water to keep them looking good.
Planting tough plants in a low-nutrient soil means they will need less watering, making the whole scheme more sustainable. In terms of radically changing our soils and growing substrates, designers stress that we should try and work with what is available to us, using locally found recycled materials, rather than transporting them from elsewhere. In the UK, garden designers such as John Little are leading the way in this area, experimenting with planting in reclaimed materials such as crushed glass and sanitaryware.
Resilient plants and Planting for Climate Change
Drought-tolerant planting has been the buzz phrase for the last couple of years, but after an extremely wet winter in SA, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need our planting to be able to tolerate both drought and winter wet. As Dan Pearson says, we need to be thinking of ‘planting for a changing climate’, and this means finding a more refined palette of resilient plants. ‘We need to think like trees,’ he says. ‘It’s not even about what the conditions are like now, it’s what they are going to be like in 10 years time, in 30 years time.’ One of the most promising young stars in garden design, Tom Massey, has recently written a book on the subject, The Resilient Garden, which is well worth a read, along with a new book on trees by Henrik Sjoman and Arit Anderson: The Essential Tree Selection Guide: For Climate Resilience, Carbon Storage, Species Diversity and Other Ecosystem Benefits.
Shrinking lawns
No Mow May is becoming Never Mow Again. Lawns are disappearing fast as a result of the increasing likelihood of a sustained period of drought in spring or summer. Some people are replacing lawns with meadows that can be left to grow long until they are cut back in late summer or early autumn and designers are increasingly enhancing these areas with bulbs and perennials to extend their period of interest. Borders are extending to create more diversity and lawns get smaller and smaller.
Wildlife habitats
More designers are incorporating structural or artistic elements into their gardens that double up as insect or mammal habitats. Uprights for fences or garden pavilions can be designed as bee posts with nesting holes for solitary bees, walls can be clad in stacked logs to provide shelter for small mammals, and cleverly designed insect hotels and planters can add to the aesthetic of a space as well as providing habitat. Alongside introducing a diverse range of pollinating plants into your garden, these habitats will ensure you are supporting a much wider range of wildlife.
DIY natural swimming ponds
One of the habitats that can add exponentially to the biodiversity of a garden is water. Even in the smallest garden, a miniature pond can attract a different gamut of insects, birds and mammals into your garden. If you are lucky enough to have more space, larger ponds or lakes are soaring in popularity. And the demand for traditional swimming pools is declining in favour of natural swimming ponds. The most organic swimming ponds I have come across are created by a man called David Pagan Butler, who is on a mission to share his brilliant DIY method of creating a low-impact, low-cost swimming pond that you can share with nature.
Garden buildings
Garden buildings remain one of the most popular elements of the garden, increasingly in demand now that the pandemic has changed our working patterns and more of us are working from home. People are prepared to spend much more on garden buildings, especially if they are sustainably and ethically made. New companies like Bonni Outbuildings are popping up all the time, offering beautifully made, simple and timeless designs.
This story originally appeared on House & Garden UK.
