Garden design trends for 2017!

Here we go again Modern Minters!

We have peppered you over the last few years with our notes on what the garden media suggests are the trendiest, hippest, most up-to-date elements that should ideally be in your garden. This year is going to be no different!

Read about the Garden Design Trends for 2014

Read about the Garden Design Trends for 2015

Read about the Garden Design Trends for 2016

Feel so overwhelmed in trying to keep up with Garden Design Trends you need something calming?

Don’t blame you for feeling that way by the time you’ve read the last one!

Last year even we got so bored by the garden design ideas suggested we put all of our wickedness and bile into a blog post that detailed some fabulous Alternative Garden Design Trends. These included reintroducing the lynx and the wolf to the UK as way of reducing the (plant eating) deer population.

Here kitty kitty!

What Are The Garden Design Trends for 2017 Then?

1. Time to get HYGGE with it

Hygge is a ‘celebration of cosiness’. Sounds amazing and can see how it would work at the end of a long day in the garden – the weeding is done, fresh tomatoes and basil harvested, olive oil and mozzarella prepared, friends arriving, prosecco opened, candles lit to sit around and enjoy the flickering of the light…. maybe even a glass of gin. That sounds deliciously cosy and hygge.

But hygge in the garden? What does that actually mean? Maybe it just means a good book and a comfy chair….?

2. Colour popping your boundaries

This means painting your shed, fences, walls and trellis a colour that stands out. It works beautifully in places like Spain, where the light is so strong. Just look at this orange in the house of Fernando Caruncho….

But in the insipid light of an English summer, will those colours really be so good to look at?

3. Organic forms

Oh, yes, we can definitely get on board with this….

Trying to make a Henry Moore #sculpture out of buxus myrtifolia….. Before it was just a mass of nothing, this will hopefully bring energy to the #plant as it grows each year…. #topiary #gardening not an #instantgarden

A post shared by ModernMint (@modernmintshop) on Feb 22, 2017 at 12:03am PST

4. Watering cans as art objects

If done in an attitude of reuse and recycle, then we love it. Just look at Henk Scholtz’s garden of ‘found’ objects…. how incredible is it!

Note the seashells on a string that make up the centre of the gate…

Colour popping boundary, made years before it was suggested as a design trend!

Who’s that lady….?

Trendy or not, reuse and recycle folks!

5. Reduce mowing

It will save you a lot of time and energy in the garden. Sow some clover in your lawn and you will help the bees too!

6. Add irrigation systems that work on smartphones

Let us be clear where we stand on this. It is a sh*t idea. Mulch your borders with homemade compost. Or bought in compost, if you don’t have enough to go around. This will create a sponge like texture to your soil and allow it to hold more water, reducing the need for irrigation.

Your smartphone will not always work. Your irrigation system most certainly won’t – it will either break, meaning you don’t get any water to your plants, or it will work so well you give your plants too much water – resulting in drowning them or making them soft and weak, rather than lean, hard and able to withstand the changes in the weather.

For more information you can always book me to talk about watering at your group, club or event…

Talks Available

7. People will grow salads on a sunny windowsill

That sounds a fantastic trend. Go for it! We would buy our salad leaf varieties from Real Seeds. We’ve been harking on about them for years, and you know what – they still haven’t let us down!

8. Exterior kitchens

This seems an amazing call to make, considering media surveys often tell us most people don’t have time to cook. Now they say we need a second kitchen outside, purely to save us walking the three feet necessary to cross the threshold and enter the back door of our houses!

If you live in a flat, where exactly are you meant to put the oven? Your balcony won’t be big enough for a table, pots full of salads from Real Seeds AND a fridge freezer.

What We Want To See Trending in 2017

Off the top of our heads, we want to see:

1. Compost heaps in every garden.
2. A fragrant plant placed at the entrance to every home, to welcome people inside.
3. Amazing topiary.
4. Ponds as a way to capture and store rainwater.
5. No-dig vegetable systems put in place.
6. Trees added to the landscape.
7. Less fires, meaning you have to reuse those prunings for wildlife habitats.
8. More flowers in your borders for the bees and the butterflies.
9. Organic bulbs planted en-masse.

These trends might not sound that trendy at all, but they will make your garden a better place and you will cultivate a much better relationship with the plants you tend – year in, year out – than if you blindly follow the latest and the new.

What would you suggest as a garden design trend for 2017?