by Kristin Guy, SUNSET MAGAZINE
As we step into 2025, the garden is transforming into more than just a backyard—it’s a space for resilience, creativity, and connection. This year’s trends bring inspiring solutions for modern challenges, from climate-adaptable plantings and foraging gardens to vibrant pops of teal and community-focused spaces. Whether you’re reimagining your garden with natural materials, creating a wellness retreat, or diving into the art of container-scaping, these ideas will inspire you to cultivate beauty, sustainability, and joy.
Let’s dig into the trends that are set to redefine outdoor living in the year ahead!
1. Wellness Spaces: Designing for Relaxation and Respite
Photo courtesy: Collecting Flowers
Wellness gardens are emerging as tranquil retreats, designed to nurture relaxation and calm within the landscape. The team at Collecting Flowers explains, “When thinking about a space for wellness, we first consider how you’ll move through the space by allowing the garden to guide you, creating a destination accessible by way of lush greenery and soft groundcover underfoot.”
Privacy and serenity are central to these designs. Nooks framed by plants like Pittosporum ‘Silver Sheen’, Acacia iteaphylla, or Grevillea provide seclusion while maintaining an open, airy feel. Elevation changes—whether a recessed spa or an elevated nook—add intrigue and intimacy. Thoughtful details like deep cedar or Monterey cypress steps that double as seating blur the lines between lounging and movement. Groundcovers such as wooly thyme or Dymondia enhance the experience, offering soft, durable paths that invite bare feet and enhance a sunny spot for relaxing. With these touches, your garden becomes a true oasis for unwinding and recharging.
2. Container-Scaping: A Trend That Brings Bold Style to Your Garden
Photo courtesy: Michael Clifford
Container-scaping is transforming patios and outdoor spaces with bold planters and architectural plantings, offering both drama and personality. Celebrity landscape designer Stephen Block of Inner Gardens likens containers to “jewelry” for the garden, emphasizing fewer, larger planters to create striking focal points. Vintage-inspired pots with patinas or textured finishes add timeless charm, while bold plants like Brachychiton rupestris or Cussonia spicata provide sculptural intrigue. Whether outdoors or on tabletops indoors, container-scaping thrives on wabi-sabi principles—embracing imperfect, aged materials to tell a story while blending beauty and functionality.
3. Teal: The Color Trend Making Waves in the Garden
Photo courtesy: the Sunset Plant Collection
Teal is having a moment in garden design, bridging fantasy and reality with its serene Caribbean blues, expansive sky tones, and the immersive depth of virtual worlds. This bold, synthetic hue aligns with wellness trends, offering a calming yet sophisticated effect. Teal’s versatility shines in both statement pieces and subtle accents, pairing beautifully with shades of blue, green, brown, orange, and gold.
4. Living Fences: The Vibrant Alternative to Traditional Boundaries
Photo courtesy: Christina Chung
Say goodbye to stark walls and rigid fences and hello to lush, multifunctional living fences. According to biologist Christina Chung of Fluent Garden, shrubs are the ultimate garden multitaskers—offering privacy, buffering noise, and providing seasonal interest with flowers, fruit, and foliage. “Try an evergreen hedgerow of sea buckthorns, strawberry tree, and rosemary for a dry, sunny spot,” she advises, “or plant currant, gooseberries, hardy fuchsia, and serviceberries for fruit and flowers in shadier areas.”
Living fences also serve as a haven for wildlife, attracting pollinators and providing shelter for birds. To create a natural, layered look, Chung recommends taking cues from nature: “Walk in nature and notice how shrubs knit into the landscape when allowed to spread.” For a personalized touch, experiment with mixing heights, shapes, and textures.
Whether you’re planting a low edible hedge of blueberries and salal or crafting a tall evergreen screen, a living fence can transform your garden into a vibrant, connected space that feels alive and purposeful.