New Garden Trends for 2018

New year, new garden? If you want to create a brand new garden this year, A New View Garden Design can help. With a creative mind, I am never short of ideas. With the independent pub trade diminishing, and the beer gardens harder to find in the spring and summer months, it’s becoming more fashionable to entertain at home in your own garden.

Would you like to entertain here?

Or would you like to entertain here?

A New View Garden Design can help make this happen for you.

As we head into the new year with thoughts of warmer weather and time spent outdoors, some of the Society of Garden Designers leading designers give their predictions on the hot new trends in garden design for 2018, including the planting, landscape materials and design styles we can expect to see in our gardens this year.

Design Themes

Outdoor Living

Pergolas, with integrated drainage, lighting and heating, will be the must-have garden feature, whilst outdoor kitchens will also grow in popularity, with dedicated spaces for cooking, eating and entertaining becoming a central focus.

Outdoor Kitchen (above)

Asymmetry

Prepare to see a contemporary update on the classic crazy paving with large-scale natural stone. Gardens will also feel less structured, as geometric lines and hard surfaces are softened by planting, and edges are broken down to create the feeling of a garden that has been there for years.

Ecological Gardens

Gardens that are designed to benefit the environment and encourage wildlife will also be big in 2018, with native plants and locally sourced materials becoming increasingly popular.

Materials

Copper

Copper, both as a material and colour, will make a big impact this year. Weathering to a bluish-green patina, hard landscaping in copper can provide a sense of warmth to planting and a contrast to surrounding gravel, stone, or wood.

We will see a move away from shiny stainless steel finishes.

Wood-Effect Tiles

We’ve already seen them used more often for interior design projects, and now wood-effect porcelain tiles look set to become a trend in garden design. They are hard-wearing, scratch, stain, and heat-resistant, they can be used for both flooring and cladding in a variety of patterns.

Wood-Effect Tile (above)

Textured Paving

Hand-made bricks and textured paving blocks will be big this year, with their irregularities and imperfections bringing a natural element to small urban gardens.

Handmade bricks used to create a path (above)

Limestone

Limestone is set to make a return to the domestic garden this year with the introduction of harder-wearing mid-toned stones rather than the bright white varieties of a few years ago.

Planting

Shrubs

It’s all about shrubs this year, moving away from naturalistic perennials and grasses to provide accent and structure to the garden. Exotic and unusual specimens will be popular. Euonymus oxyphyllus, an elegant, slow growing shrub from Korea is going to be used more, thanks to its rich, emerald green leaves which turn to shades of yellow, bronze and red in the autumn.

Low Level Woodland Plants

A trend seen in London, low level woodland-style planting mixing ferns, mosses, anemones and grasses is something that will prove attractive, working particularly well in tricky shaded city gardens.

Architectural Plants

Sharp architectural planting contrasting with softer organic hard finishes, sometimes mixed with country-style planting to blend sharper elements together will look good. Plants such as the Sabal minor (dwarf palmetto) or Chamaerops humilis (dwarf fan palm) will be fashionable.

If you would like to have the most fashionable, up-to-date garden, feel free to contact me. Or you can email at info@anewviewgardendesign.com