8 Best Garden Trends in 2022

Gardens are wonderful luxuries. Who doesn’t like to have big, green, and luscious lawns full of colorful plants and beautiful flowers? The only thing that’s cooler than having a garden is keeping your lawn up-to-date with all the latest trends. According to experts, there are a bunch of gardening styles and hacks that are going to go up in popularity this summer of 2022 as garden-related spending goes up.

Gardening is evolving with the fast-changing times and is therefore adapting to the new circumstances we now find ourselves in. What that means is that gardening is rapidly becoming more climate-conscious, more open to experimentation, more space-conscious, and more colorful. These new garden trends are also meant to make our lawns more resilient, a crucial quality in these times.

A new and supremely welcome quality that 2022’s trends are bringing to gardening is practicality. Lawns are nice and all, but they are at the end of the day a vast green expanse that could be used for so many things. Fortunately, the latest smart gardening trends aim to make our lawns more usable.

We’ve all had to put up with a rather drab year thanks to lockdowns so it’s only fitting that we break the monotony with something new. Let’s start this summer off right with some hip gardening tips for the hobbyist who works the land.

1. All-Season Garden

Multiple types of plants allow your garden to be pretty all season.

There’s nothing quite like a cherry blossom tree or two in your luscious green yard studded with flowers blooming in the middle of spring. It’s a veritable spectacle of beautiful color that is hard to top with any other landscaping trend. Alas, once the blooming is done your garden can become kind of featureless at the end of spring, leaving you to wait for next year to come around till your lawn looks pretty again.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way as it is perfectly possible to have your lawn be useful and beautiful all year round. Some foresight and smart planting are required to achieve this, but once it is done your all-season lawn can reap all sorts of dividends. There are a few ways you can achieve an all-season garden.

You can plant shrubs or trees in your garden that change throughout the year in an interesting way, rather than simply blooming once and then lay dormant. A journal can help you to keep track of what your plants need and how they change throughout the year, and cold-resistant plants can help give you a luscious garden even when temperatures begin to drop.

2. Veggie Garden 

Grow your own leafy veggies.

One way to hugely increase the usefulness of your garden is with a veggie garden. Vegetable gardens have near-immediate utility since they allow you to produce healthy leafy greens that you can use to better your diet and ditch the grocery store produce. A raised planter is one of the best additions to your lawn if you’re interested in starting your own vegetable garden.

Listing the huge number of vegetables and flowers you can grow in a raised garden bed would require a separate article. Suffice it to say, you won’t need to buy cherry tomatoes from Trader Joe’s anymore if you build a garden box. If you decide to try your hand at French intensive gardening, you might not need to go and buy any vegetables from any supermarket. This garden trend allows you to produce a big harvest from a small box and is ideal if you want to walk away from big agro. Chances are your vegetables will be fresher and taste better once you get your raised garden bed in place.

3. Exotic Fanfare

Exotic plants plus landscaping is the ultimate power duo.

Ever wanted to see the beautiful colors of an exotic landscape without leaving your town? That might have been an unusual question to get a few years ago but in the context of our pandemic lives, it is an infinitely relevant one. Travel is not yet fully back online and in the meantime, you might want or indeed need a change of pace and scenery for your own well-being and enjoyment. If that sounds like something you are wanting, it’s time to consider brightening up your garden or vertical garden with some colorful vegetation from faraway places.

Tropical plants such as elephant's ear (Caladium), rose mallows, hibiscus, and cannas will endow your garden with the luscious green and brightly colored hues of a rainforest, perfect for transporting you to a new environment without ever having to leave the backyard. Some darker foliage can also help the bright colors stand out and provide pleasant contrasts that make your garden even more immersive. This garden trend of 2022 means keeping an eye out for plants such as crape myrtle, sweet potato vines, and smoke bushes. These offer striking yet dark colors that are perfect for offsetting the brighter colors in your garden.

4. Technicolor Rainbow

Bicolor layouts make for an immaculate lawn.

If you’ve ever gone for a stroll in the gardens on the grounds of the world’s best public parks, you’ve undoubtedly noticed something. One detail that isn’t spared is the bright colors, and that’s no mistake. From Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park to the neatly manicured Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, color is key to creating a distinctive natural look that is appealing to all guests. This means more than just placing a bunch of colorful plants together, but rather means considering how certain plants look together and what kind of aesthetic is being created.

One way of achieving this is with a bicolor scheme, in other words using two dominant colors paired together for maximum effect. This garden trend allows two distinct colors to play off one another and achieve the best visual effect. For instance, a combination of purple and white petunias can create a very pleasing aesthetic that emphasizes color and order. Alternatively, you can use more than two colors for a tapestry look that achieves the same effect.

5. Space-Saving Garden

Vertical plants save space and are visually pleasing.

In our increasingly urbanized world space is at a premium. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your dream of having your very own idyllic lawn. Space-saving urban gardens can pack a lot of luscious greenery into a space-efficient space, meaning you don’t have to have a concrete pathway for a front yard. Vegetable home gardens, flower boxes, a place for your tyke to play outside, all of it is possible with the right dimensions.

6. Green Dream

Use native plants for a more eco-friendly garden.

If you want to create an eco-friendly garden, there are a few simple steps you can take that will make your garden more harmonious with nature by reducing erosion and water consumption. This gardening trend of 2022 involves choosing native plants over exotic ones for a more eco-friendly garden as native plants are less resource-intensive — and will also do more to provide food and shelter for local wildlife.  

7. Houseplant Havens 

House plants are great interior decor.

Alas, not all homes will have their own lawn. A concrete jungle is often rather short on greenery, and so you need to supplement with greenery wherever you can. The best way to do this is with houseplants and with flowers wherever you can. This home and garden trend means putting plants in your home wherever you can. If you have some empty corners of your home or some blank window sills with lots of room, add some potted plants and flowers for a dash of color and beauty. 

8. Make It Your Spot 

Create a space for you.

In the wake of the lockdowns, a lot of people had to improvise a new spot for them to hang out since bars, restaurants, cafes, cinemas, and other public spaces were closed down for months on end. However, even as the restrictions have begun to lift many have kept up the trend of making their own spots to relax where they don’t have to worry about IDs or masks. This garden trend with patio furniture allows for a beautiful spot that looks to be half outdoorsy, and half indoorsy which is quite nice for a place you want to relax.