Enter the new year with new ideas for your garden. Ensure you stand out and stay in style by planning your horticultural look with inspiration from our top upcoming gardening trends for 2017. Here’s everything you need to know for the year ahead:
Small Spaces
Urban gardening isn’t going anywhere. With the ever-present need for natural beauty at odds with the modern cityscape, gardeners are getting more and more creative in bringing life to small spaces. Rooftop and balcony gardens are taking over whatever outdoor space city-dwellers can find, while the home itself is becoming more filled than ever with plantlife. Houseplants, window boxes and kitchen herb gardens are a common site – but the real statement pieces are miniature table top box gardens and home-made terrariums.
John Lewis’s annual shopping report is predicting that this will be the year of cacti in the home, while other brands are focusing on indoor cultivators. However we’re thinking that the big thing for the Instagram generation is going to continue to be a home-made, upcycling look (more on reclaimed materials below) so be prepared to see plenty of rustic apple crate gardens and jam jar planters in your social media feeds.
Grow Your Own
A study by MORI has shown that “going vegan” in Britain has increased by 360 percent in the last 10 years. Coupled with the recent movement for clean eating, that’s a lot more people eating their vegetables!
In fact, the clean eating trend has opened our eyes to all sorts of new recipes that involve fresh, natural ingredients. And it’s sparked a growing consideration of where the food you eat originates. For these reasons, we’re seeing Grow Your Own as the foodie headline for 2017. Along with the classics like tomatoes, chillies and herbs we’re expecting to see greenhouses and allotments filled with a colourful variation of exotic veg as growers take on more challenging ideas to taste more experimental home-grown cuisines.
Get your grow bags out now, because you’re going to need something more than organic cucumbers to impress.
Outdoor Kitchens
BBQs were just the start. When you’ve picked your home grown food, it’s no longer cool to bring it inside. This summer we’re seeing the rise of the outdoor kitchen: in which food is grown, prepared, cooked and eaten al fresco.
Long summer evenings are just crying for Instagram pics of your latest recipe in the natural light of the outdoors. From roasting vegetables over fire pits to authentic wood burning pizza ovens, everything tastes better when it’s cooked in the open air. Expect to see work surfaces, sinks and even outdoor fridges making it in to the garden this summer.
If 2016 was the year for bringing the living area outdoors, 2017 is the year for bringing out the kitchen.
Outdoor Lighting
Photo: https://www.gardensandhomesdirect.co.ukWith hundreds of affordable and decorative options available, garden lighting is set to continue growing in popularity this year.
Beyond simple wall lights that illuminate your whole patio, we’re looking at smaller lamps and LED bulbs that can provide a softer effect whether they’re strung across tree branches or decorating the edges of flowerbeds, creating a magical ambience as the sun sets.
The popularity of solar powered lights is also steadily rising now that their effectiveness has been seen. The ease of dealing with a lamp requiring no batteries and no plug, plus the environmental benefit of their power source, ensures that these will continue to be a favourite.
Style Blends
We’re now moving beyond the ultra-modern garden style of angular furniture on minimalist layouts and seeing a trend for mash-ups, combining the old and the new.
Traditional styling will meet contemporary designs as trends blend in to each other in an era-less combination. The mix of looking back and forward thinking has been embraced in architecture and interior design over the last few years and now it’s making its way to the garden. Expect to see old fashioned bird houses on sleek, bold pedestals. Country styling bleeding in to urban chic. Farmhouse hanging baskets over modern patio lounge sets. Today’s style brings together yesterday’s and tomorrow’s.
Will you be embracing this years big gardening trends, or do you have exciting plans of your own? Let us know in the comments.
