The Best Gardening Trends of the 2000s Decade
Gardening Ideas that Changed the Way we Garden
By Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide
All gardens are a work in progress, constantly evolving and, hopefully, growing. As gardeners, we're very influenced by gardening trends, whether we mean to be or not. Gardening trends effect the plants the nurseries sell and products we're permitted to use on them. Gardening bloomed as a hobby in the 1990s. In the 2000s, we started to refine our tastes and techniques. Here are my choices for the Top 10 Gardening Trends of the past decade. I hope you'll share your thoughts about what your choices would be.
1. Shrub Explosion
Photo courtesy of Proven Winners.
There’s no excuse for a foundation of yews any longer. If you’re looking for curb appeal, garden bones or a lower maintenance garden, take a look at today’s offering of shrubs. They bloom and bloom, they have purple, golden or striped foliage, they weep, they contort and they don’t take over. There are repeat blooming hydrangeas and lilacs, a rainbow of Nine Barks (Physocarpus) Black Lace™ Elderberry, Sterile, Dwarf Buddleia ‘Lo and Behold Blue Chip’ and evergreens that aren’t green.
More on Sambucus 'Black Lace"
Disease resistant plants, in general, have been good news for gardeners. But when the prima donas of the garden, roses, start to flaunt their ease of growing, you know things have changed.
2. Foliage Plants
I guess it started with the sun tolerant coleus plants, but my goodness, look what’s happened. You don’t even need flowers any more. We went from a handful of white variegated hosta to a rainbow of sweet potato vines, New Zealand flax (Phormium), topical cannas, Alternanthera and Persian Shield (Strobilanthus). Plus there’s all that wonderful breeding going on with old standards like Coral Bells (Heuchera) and ornamental grasses. The Princess series of pennisetum goes from red to gold.
3. Disease Resistant Roses
If you still think roses are fussy and time consuming, you’re growing the wrong roses. Series like Flower Carpet® and the Knock Out® are pretty much fail safe, but many recent landscape roses have been bred in answer to our despair. Don’t overlook the luscious, scented David Austin roses. These look much more high maintenance than they are.
4. Walk-On Plants
Photo Courtesy of STEPABLES®.
Planting low growing, creeping plants between and around pavers is not a new concept, but having plant lines that specialize in them - taking the work out of finding suitable plants - deserves a shout out. The art of great gardens is often in the details and walk-on plants add a lovely sense of age and welcoming to a garden. Companies like STEPABLES® and Jeepers Creepers filled a much loved niche. http://gardening.about.com/od/gardendesign/ig/Plants-to-Walk-On/
5. Front Yard Gardens
Americans don’t spend much time in the front yards anymore, so it’s understandable we haven’t focused our gardening attention there. But like low mow lawns, a well thought out garden, especially one with drought tolerant, native shrubs adds curb appeal and eco-friendliness while cutting down on maintenance. Just think, no mowing, no pruning the yews, minimal watering... It’s especially nice to see front yard gardens in areas where people walk about.
Design Ideas for Front Yards
You can find the original story here. We're practicing half of the trends noted above. 2010 will be better than 2009.
6. Heirloom Tomatoes
Photo: stock.xchng / JohnMason.
It’s hard to remember when heirloom tomatoes were a trendy luxury. It’s wonderful that just about every garden has an heirloom or two in it. Heirloom tomatoes are the vegetable that jolted us back into demanding flavor from our vegetables, whether we grow them or buy them. They also deserve some credit for getting people back into vegetable gardening, because we all craved the taste of a vine warm Brandywine. And they led the way for a renewed interest in other heirloom vegetables, like Chioggia beets and Cinderella pumpkins.
7. Container Vegetables
As if the renewed interest in vegetable gardening weren’t wonderful enough, we’re also growing them in previously underused spaces, like the front steps, the driveway and windowboxes. It’s just so nice to see vegetables out in the open, rather than relegated to a fenced in area of the backyard. Hopefully this means we’ve come to appreciate the beauty of vegetable plants and we’ll be seeing more front yard veggie gardens and edible landscaping.
8. Low Mow Lawns
I’m on record defending having some lawn. I like the look of a lawn and I enjoy using mine, but I’m not so keen on mowing it every week, especially in August. Kudos to all the researchers out there looking for grasses that not only require minimal mowing, they are also drought and pest resistant. The type of grass will vary with locations and climate, but fine fescues and buffalo grass have been getting the most positive press. This is a trend that’s just catching on, but it looks like it’s growing.
9. Rain Gardens
The prior decade brought us xeriscape gardens and this decade introduced us to rain gardens. Rain gardens are slightly depressed gardens planted near impervious surfaces like driveways and parking lots. They catch run off water and allow it to slowly soak into the ground and filter, reducing the amount of pollution that goes into nearby bodies of water and our water supply. Rain gardens take a bit of planning, but they’re very easy to install and maintain and they function quite well while looking good.
10. Anything Goes
Photo Courtesy of Magpie
We’ve broken free of garden design rules and dictates on good taste and we’ve embraced personalizing our gardens. We may still love English and Tuscan gardens, but we’re not trying to please anyone other than ourselves. We’re willing to take chances and have some fun with our gardens, even if it means throwing in the kitchen sink. I think this is one of the most positive gardening trends, if it can be called a trend. We’ve finally learned to trust ourselves as gardeners.
No comments:
Post a Comment