8 Garden Trends That Will Be Everywhere

In 2024, many of us are looking for ways to make our little slice of the outdoors more sustainable, more healthy, and more vibrant. We want to create leafy spaces where we can escape from the stress of everyday life and nourish our well-being. We’re also looking to have fun in the garden by embracing a trend toward deep, dark plants in a backward look at moody, Victorian gothic. Those of us not looking to the 19^th century for inspiration are looking to the future, bringing sci-fi to the garden in the form of plants with neon-tinged foliage, terrariums, and night gardens.

Here’s what industry experts think will be the biggest garden trends for 2024, along with some plant recommendations to help you get the look.

• Katie Tamony is the chief marketing officer and trendspotter at Monrovia, a California-based nursery.
• Justin Hancock isahorticulturist and brand manager for Costa Farms, a Florida-based plant grower.
• Maryah Greene isa Brooklyn-based plant stylist and consultant.

1. Eco-conscious gardens

Pollinator gardens have been popular for several years as a way to make outdoor spaces eco-friendly as well as decorative. Now, people are expanding the idea of making yards and gardens more beneficial by adding edible plants, reducing lawns, and using sustainable gardening practices.

“We are seeing more interest in soil health, doing good for the environment, and creating a space that’s like a Garden of Eden,” says Katie Tamony, chief marketing officer for Monrovia, a California-based plant grower.

The trend has taken off as a new generation becomes first-time homeowners and rethinks what they plant in their yards. “Millennials are more environmentally conscious than past generations,” says Justin Hancock, horticulturist and brand manager for Costa Farms, a Florida-based nursery. “Younger people want to feel good about the environment and about contributing to a better planet.”

To make your yard more welcoming for humans and wildlife, fill it with blooms that attract bees, birds, and butterflies, and edibles, such as these plant choices:

• Flowering native plants such as coneflowers look beautiful, need less maintenance, and are often the best choice for attracting and supporting native pollinators.
• Compact berry bushes let you grow food in a small space. For example ‘Sunshine Blue’ blueberry from Monrovia grows only 3-4 feet tall and gives a good yield of berries even when grown in a container.
• New Flavorette Honey-Apricot rose from Proven Winners lets you have your roses and eat them, too. The petals of this peachy rose have a sweet flavor that works well in salads or desserts. It’s disease-resistant and pollinator-friendly too.
• Tea Garden plants like aromatic lemon verbena, bee balm, bronze fennel, chamomile, or mint are perfect for growing your own herbal tea. Plus, many of these plants are pollinator favorites.

2. Colorful houseplants

Houseplant fever shows no sign of cooling down as biophilic design drives a demand for indoor plants. Biophilic design is a growing trend that incorporates elements like plants, earthy colors, and natural light in homes and offices to create a connection between the built environment and nature. Get it right, and biophilic design makes you feel calmer, healthier, and more productive, goes the theory.

The easiest way to bring biophilic design into a home is with houseplants, especially tropical plants that thrive in low light. So it’s little surprise that already popular monstera, pothos, philodendron, and ZZ plants will continue to be hot, hot, hot.

This year’s houseplant trend to watch: Plants with colorful foliage. “There’s more interest now in houseplants with gold foliage,” says Hancock. “Most houseplants have green foliage, so it pops if you have a plant that’s bright gold or yellow-green.” Get your gold on with these tropical plants:

• ‘Chameleon’ ZZ plant has golden yellow leaves that mature to a deep green. The mix of new and older leaves produces a striking multicolor plant.
• ‘Lemon Meringue’ pothos is a new variegated variety that produces dark green leaves with gold-yellow edges.
• Despite its name, Black Gold snake plant has dark green leaves edged in yellow.

3. Gardening for wellness

When your plants bring you joy, you feel better. It’s gardening as a sort of outdoor therapy. “Gardening has become an activity that lets us tune out the noise of the world,” Tamony says, and she sees even more of this continue to happen.

Try this garden trend by creating a meditation area or a sitting nook so you can sit amid your plants and just breathe. Enhance the effect with fragrant plants, which can make us feel happier and calmer every time we take a deep breath near them. Add a few of these plants that have sweetly scented flowers:

• Eau de Parfum rose is a rose line from Monrovia that looks and smells like traditional roses but has better disease resistance than traditional varieties. Finally, you can have a tough rose that smells good. Eau de Parfum roses produce big, full blooms in shades of pink, peach, and red.
• Swan Lake mock orange is a rounded shrub from Monrovia that produces mounds of white blooms that smell like grape soda. It grows to 6 feet tall, so you can use it to create fragrant privacy.
• ‘Summer Soul’ Arabian jasmine has big, heavily scented blooms and can be grown in a container and clipped into a hedge.
• Gardenia is a go-to plant to bring sweet fragrance to your garden. If space is limited, go for Gardenia jasminoides ‘Buttons,’ also known as cape jasmine. It grows to just 2 feet tall. If you have more room, try ‘Fortuniana’ gardenia, which gets up to 8 feet tall and blooms continuously.

4. Heat-tolerant plants

Last year was one of the hottest on record for many U.S. cities, and this year is expected to be no different as the planet faces increasingly extreme climate conditions. Plus, a new USDA Hardiness Zone map was released last year that reflected this warming trend, with about half the country now in warmer zones due to extreme weather becoming the norm. Plants that can take the heat in stride are likely to soar in popularity, right along with soaring temps.

With this trend in mind, Costa Farms now sells mandevilla (a tropical vine usually grown as a summer annual) in six-packs so gardeners can use them as bedding plants, Hancock says. “They take the heat and humidity well, and they grow fast and cover a lot of ground quickly.” He also predicts a rise in interest in lavender because it can tolerate both heat and drought. And plant breeders are coming out with more heat-tolerant varieties of garden favorites such as:

• Lavender is a classic herb that thrives in heat and drought. If you live in a place where it’s hot and humid, try ‘Phenomenal’ lavender from the Southern Living plant collection. It even does well in hot, sticky Florida.
• Grace N’ Grit roses from Monrovia were bred to stand up to heat and humidity. The varieties in this line produce double blooms on 5-foot-tall shrubs.
• Golden Child Eastern arborvitae from Monrovia is a compact evergreen shrub with yellow-green leaves. It resists heat better than many other arborvitae shrubs, so it’s a good pick for hotter-than-ever summers.

5. Container gardens

In an age of smaller yards and more urban living, container gardening owns the moment because it lets you put a lot of plants in a small space. Since most of us have less garden space than earlier generations had, container gardening is booming in popularity. The National Gardening Association found a 200% increase in container gardening in a single year and predicts that trend will continue. Hanging containers, which take up no floor space or deck/patio space, are the ultimate space-saving garden.

“Climbing and trailing plants are popular,” says Hancock. “When they cascade down, they add movement and drama to a space.”

Hanging plants are an excellent pick for urban dwellers whose only outdoor area may be a balcony. “Suspending plants from a ceiling or mounting them on the wall lets you maximize the plant life in a sliver of space,” says Maryah Greene, a Brooklyn-based plant stylist and consultant who specializes in helping people fit plants into tiny New York apartments. “They let you squeeze a garden into an urban space.” 

These plants all work wonderfully in container gardens:

• Itsy Bitsy Peach miniature rose will fit in a container because it grows just 18 to 24 inches tall. It produces masses of blooms that are in the same color range as the 2024’s Pantone Color of the Year.
• Tiny tomatoes can be grown in a hanging basket outdoors. Choose cherry or grape tomatoes like ‘Midnight Snack,’ ‘Napa Grape,’ or ‘Tumbling Tom.”
• ‘Sapphire Cascade’ blueberries can grow in a basket outdoors, too. Two-foot-long stems of berries will spill over the sides.
• For indoor gardens, spider plant is a classic pick for hanging in a brightly lit room or porch for a jungle-like effect.

6. Nostalgic flowers

Uncertain times have us longing for old-fashioned flowers, according to Tamony, who has noticed a “trend toward nostalgia and comfort plants.” We want to be reminded of landscapes we’ve seen surrounding 100-year-old houses, where the plants are a link to an era we imagine was simpler than the one we live in now.

Based on the recent resurgence in interest, roses lead the pack when it comes to this nostalgic trend, notes Tamony. “They have a reputation for being difficult and fussy, but new varieties have the performance people are looking for and the disease-resistance that makes them easier to grow.” Other popular plants with nostalgic value include hydrangeas and peonies.

Cue the nostaglia with these plants:

• Heavenly Ascent roses are a collection of disease-resistant climbers you can train to grow on a trellis. They are continuous and abundant bloomers, producing rafts of double roses. They grow to 8 feet tall, a more manageable size for smaller gardens than many heirloom climbing roses.
• Eclipse hydrangea from Bailey Nurseries is a new variety that has the classic mophead flower shape but ups the ante with dark foliage that makes a striking contrast to its cherry pink blooms.
• Peonies are having a major moment this year, both for landscapes and as cut flowers, thanks in large part to their ability to evoke gardens of yesteryear.

7. Hortifuturism

Not all gardeners are looking to the past for inspiration. Millennials and Gen Z love science fiction so much that Garden Media Group, a PR and marketing company for the green industry, predicts a bold, futuristic look with vibrant colors for our gardens. Sci-fi is one of the most popular genres of books, films, and TV series, so why not bring that futuristic energy into the garden, too?

Fill containers and mixed beds with plants in hues of brilliant purple, hot pink, and lime green. It’s an outdoor palette inspired by the fungi in the hit Netflix series “The Last of Us.” Garden Media Group declares lime green (which it has dubbed cyber lime) is the new black, a futuristic shade of the moment, nothing that “the striking relationship between nature and technology is symbolized by this intense green.”

Other ways to tap into hortifuturism include night gardens with plants that seem to glow in moonlight, alien-looking succulents, survivalist gardens full of medicinal plants and edibles, and indoor terrariums with otherworldly-looking carnivorous plants.

Create a sci-fi garden with these plants like:

• Bloomables Wedding Gown hydrangea has bouquet-like flower heads with lime-green-tinged white petals.
• Queeny Lime zinnia has lime green petals tinged with purple-pink for an almost fluorescent effect.
• ‘Sterling Moon’ Lunar Lights begonia is a Southern Living Plant Collection introduction with puckered leaves frosted in silver and flecked in mint green. Plus it has contrasting pink flowers.
• Pharaoh’s Mask colocasia has huge, bright green leaves with raised, dark purple veins that evoke the ribs of some swamp creature. This 3- to 4-foot-tall beauty also has nearly black stems.
• ‘Painted Lady’ philodendron is a variegated houseplant with arrow-shaped leaves splotched with chartreuse on pink stems.

8. Moody, broody plants

Goth gardens have been trending on social media, thanks to Gen Z’s love of dramatic landscapes. Goth—short for gothic—refers to a retro Victorian Era style that embraces a dark, haunted look in the garden. Think blood-red or deep, dark-as-midnight flowers or leaves.

Embrace this trend by creating a moody bed of scarlet, dark purple, and burgundy-hued plants in a shady spot, accented with moss-covered stones or a well-aged urn. “Leave plants a bit untidy. Withered plants and faded blooms add to the theme,” Garden Media Group says.

Get the look with these plants:

• Black mondo grassis ideal for planting along the edges of a path or border garden.
• Hollyhock ‘Black Night’ has to be the quintessential gothic plant with its tall stems of dark flowers.
• Forever Midnight heuchera, a brand new plant from Monrovia, has ruffled leaves so deep purple they’re almost black. Use this foot-tall perennial in mixed containers, borders, and part-shade gardens.
• ProCut Red Sunflowers have blood-red petals and a near-black center. These gloriously goth flowers are easy to grow from seed.