In with the new and out with the old, Nature Hills Nursery is looking forward to a brand new year! Ring in the next gardening season with these up-and-coming gardening trends to keep you on top of the neighborhood A-list!
1. Mediterranean/Xeric Gardens
With lower water-usage policies in place in many stricken communities and the need for water-wise gardens, the Mediterranean-inspired Xeric garden is the perfect solution for fast-draining soils, arid climates, and hot sunny regions where there is naturally little rainfall.
Plants that thrive on less with deep taproots, waxy leaves, and succulent foliage thrive in the sunny xeriscape where your front yard is a Rock Garden or desert already!
Trees that are low-water usage include Acacia, Olives, Palms, Chinese Pistache, Citrus Trees, Juniper, Desert Willow, Palo Verde, Figs, and Arizona Ash. Water-wise Shrubs include Sumac, Yucca, Manzanita, Aloe, Oleander, Bougainvillea, Echeveria, Juniper, Cypress, and Barberry. There’s a dizzying array of drought-tolerant Perennials and Ornamental Grasses for you to choose from as well!
2. Micro-Homesteading
Bring on the backyard homestead! Chickens, micro-orchards, and pet miniature goats! Oh my! No matter how big or small your property is, we’re sure that with some creativity and determination, you too can transform it into a micro-farm!
Fresh produce, medicinal herbs, dwarf fruit trees and fruiting shrubs, edible landscaping, and high-density planting techniques all contribute to making your landscape work for you instead of the other way around! Be sure to check with your local government and get permits for those miniature backyard animals and chicken coops.
Organic gardening at its finest, food sustainability and security, and healthy eating right outside your backdoor. Allowing you to know exactly what went into and onto your food!
3. Food Forests/Community Gardens
For many, a single mature fruit tree or established fruiting shrub pumps out more fruit than a single family can use or keep from going bad. This abundance brings back the good old days of sharing the harvest with the neighbors and community! Bringing communities together by turning that patch of unused community land into a neighborhood garden turns an otherwise eye-sore into a place for swapping seeds and stories, exchanging advice, extra lettuce, and laughter!
Many cities are planting community gardens and food forests that are free to all (or only need a small contribution) to become a part of! Benefiting everyone when those buckets of zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers begin ripening!
It’s crowd-sourcing at its tastiest!
4. Minimalism/Simplicity
The need to downsize and simplify after a hectic few years has seeped into our landscaping as well! While typically considered a formal garden, a minimalist or simplified garden doesn’t have to be anything but easier, lower maintenance, downsized, or less work!
The less is more mentality is not only less work, but less money, and maintenance too! Using negative space, hardscaping, and very careful placement of your landscaping keep an area from looking plain or barren, yet still well thought out and planned.
5. Edwardian and Victorian Gardens
The complete opposite of Minimalism, the romantic excess of the Edwardian or Victorian Garden harkens back to a time of elegant grandeur! Perhaps it was because of the wildly popular Bridgerton TV series or just a need to return to the beauty that this antiquated time carried with it, but there is a renewed interest in Romanticism and nostalgia. Bringing peace and connection to what we perceived as easier ‘good ol’ days’.
Flouncy and bountiful hedges dripping in blooms as heavy in petal count as they are heavy with fragrance. Floriferous drifts of blooms, soft colors, and trellis dripping in romantically old-world elegance - helping us feel connected to the past while keeping it alive in the busy present.
Choose big double Roses, Hollyhocks, Hydrangeas, Tall Garden Phlox, Lilacs, Forget-Me-Nots, and other Victorian Flowers carefully packed together to achieve a full, bountiful cut flower garden or Cottage garden with arbors and trellis dripping in Climbing Roses and Clematis. Flowering plants spilling out of urns and planters, or tumbling over the garden edges and creeping into the lawn with a flowering groundcover pathway meandering through the middle. Add some fat berry bushes, rambling Strawberry plants, and flowering trees and topiaries to complete the look if space allows.
Then sit back in a lawn chair with some Jane Austen or go for a stroll with a parasol in one hand and a basket of cut flowers!
6. Embracing Color Extremes
From dark and moody colors, and near-black foliage, to eye-poppingly-bright nearly-neon colored flowers, embracing the shock value many new plants bring to the table are sure to turn heads!
Bring all the attention with brooding dark foliage plants and near-black blossoms for a dark-themed garden that is sure to set your landscape apart from the rest. Or go bold with chartreuse foliage and neon pink or yellow blossoms that won’t need a spotlight to shine!
Some of the newest midnight-hued offerings include the Kona Coffee Elephant Ears, Black Diamond® Crape Myrtle, Midnight Rose Coral Bells, Midnight Masquerade Penstemon, Ninebark, Concorde Barberry, and Nigra Hollyhocks that Wednesday would approve of!
However, Barbie would love a bright garden of Curly Fries Hosta, Luminary® Tall Garden Phlox, Cat’s Eye Arborvitae, Sunset Magic Rock Rose, Firefly™ Nightglow™ Bush Honeysuckle, Bloomables® Akadama® Bigleaf Hydrangea, Vivid™ Bright Light Dianthus, Sombrero® Hot Coral Coneflower, Lemon Supreme Coral Bells, and Easy Elegance® Screaming Neon Red™ Rose!
7. Return to Native
Backyard biodiversity is on the rise as interest continues to keep the focus on bringing back native plants into the landscape! Replacing invasive or non-native plants, and exotics that take too much out of us to keep caring for, and boosting local ecosystems is where it’s at in 2024!
Nature Hills has a huge offering of native perennials, shrubs and trees broken down into growing zones, size and color, and even By State for you to choose from!
Increasing local biodiversity and native plants support local wildlife and beneficial insects while reducing water and pesticide dependency. Plus you will make your landscape much lower maintenance!
8. Self-Care Gardens
Gardening is all about ‘me time’ and fantastic for mental and emotional well-being! Especially after the hectic last few years, the shift towards self-care has grown exponentially!
- Include plants that have meaning to you
- Plants that connect you to happy memories
- Fragrant plants that relax the senses
- Herbs and medicinal plants
- Install Superfruit and Juicing gardens
A meditative outdoor garden room, a corner garden surrounded by swaying ornamental grasses, a shade tree with a hammock, a nook with a table and reading chair, a yoga nook on your porch, or a garden bench by a fragrant shrub is all you need to encourage the hectic world to vanish for a while.
New Year … New Garden For You!
Welcome 2024 with lofty plans for new gardens that boost your mood, health, your ecosystem, and curb appeal! Nature Hills is here to give you and your landscape an edge in the coming new year with innovative ideas and cutting-edge landscape plants!
Happy Planting and Happy New Year from Nature Hills Nursery to you and yours!
