Good garden design can change your life–and remove boundaries between indoors and out to increase living space. We’ve rounded up 13 new ideas to steal from designers to improve your landscape this year, whether you’re planning a major hardscaping project or need a few accessories to add curb appeal:
Black Palette
Monochromatic and minimalist, a black palette is a dramatic foil for green plants, the silvery wood of weathered furniture, and gray gravel. Start by painting a wall or fence to establish a tone.
Add black accessories: paint handles black to make tools display worthy. Simple black tables and benches will complement other furniture made of wood or natural materials such as bamboo or rattan. Recycled rubber trugs made from tires are durable and inexpensive.
Indoor/Outdoor Flow
Think like an architect and incorporate the garden into living space to increase your home’s livable square footage. Maximize indoor-outdoor flow by increasing the width of door openings or with French doors.
Wall Fountains
Good for small spaces, wall fountains don’t take up valuable planting space in the garden. A narrow trough at the base of a wall fountain can catch water and recirculate it.
Columnar Trees
Plant fastigiate trees (which grow from a single trunk in a narrow, upright direction) in small gardens or to solve a landscape design problem. Columnar trees grow up instead of out. Their footprint is minor but their impact is major. Popular choices include cypress trees, Japanese holly ‘Sky Pencil’, European green beech, or fastigiate hornbeam trees. Easily shaped by pruning, columnar trees can be trained to grow flat against a wall or as topiaries or as dense hedges.
Garden Bells
Garden bells are the new wind chimes. But better because, as all know from watching It’s a Wonderful Life, “every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”
Fire Features
A fire feature turns a garden into a gathering place. A fire pit or fireplace is a lure because it creates warmth and light. And because of the hypnotic quality of flame and crackling wood.
Cook on it, warm your hands over it, or just pull up chairs on a chilly night.
Portable Garden Beds
A portable garden is a perfect solution for renters who don’t want to invest a lot of money into hardscaping. And for the rest of us. Put raised beds or planters on casters and you can wheel them around to chase the sun or to instantly re-arrange an outdoor space. In winter, potted plants on rolling plant stands can come indoors easily no matter how heavy the pot.
House Numbers as Art
No longer an afterthought plucked from a hardware store aisle, house numbers set a tone. Hand-crafted, bespoke, or painted: custom house numbers are becoming common and create instant curb appeal.
For more of our favorite house numbers, see Gilded Numbers by See.Painting and 10 Easy Pieces: Tile House Numbers.
Outdoor Showers
They’re so common, they’re the new hose. All you need for an outdoor shower is plumbing and a shower head; let it drain into the grass or a shallow bed of gravel.
Horizontal Slat Fences
As we noted recently, “Horizontal stripes make things look wider, which is why you don’t wear them. But your garden should. A horizontal slat fence will create the same optical illusion outdoors–and make your garden look bigger, too.”
Designer Doormats
Good design can elevate even the most utilitarian item to art.
French Drains
Embrace the beauty in the everyday details. There’s no need to try to hide drainage, irrigation, or sump pumps. Instead consider them an element to add to the landscape design.
Artificial Turf
Fake grass has gotten good at fooling us. And in drought country–or anywhere where water usage is of concern in the garden–it has artificial turf has undeniable benefits. It requires no water, weeding, fertilizing, or mowing. And as a design element, it’s as reliable as indoor carpet. It will stay the same color and in the same condition as the day you lay it if you care for it properly.