A new year of gardening is upon us! We couldn’t be more excited to watch the gardening trends of 2024 come alive in landscapes, gardens, and balconies across Portland, Vancouver, and the Pacific Northwest.

1. Gardening Color Trends: Focused Palettes & Unusual Hues

In 2024 the trend towards more intentionality with color is only going to increase. Designing and updating garden beds, containers, and planting spaces with a clear color palette in mind is on the rise, and we couldn’t be happier! Gone are the days of a confetti like approach to color—instead, picture masses of plantings and each layer of the landscape centered around a specific hue or deliberate color palette.

Each of our landscape design guides begin with a conversation around color, and we select two thoughtful color palettes to bring each style to life. Not to mention, both of our Bohemian Design Guide’s color palettes reflect the trending colors for 2024! 😏

Pantone Color of the Year: Peach Fuzz

Peach Fuzz is warm and uplifting and echoes a call to “nurture ourselves and others“. What better way to bring this romantic hue and its message to life than through the language of flowers?

We love how this tone is echoed in the soft colors of David Austin roses like Roald Dahl, Bathsheba, and The Lady Gardener—any of these roses would make a fantastic statement plant in a new planting bed. Introduce the warmth of Peach Fuzz to your existing planting schemes with spires of blooms like Dalmatian Peach Foxglove, Salmon Star Lupine, or Peachie Keen Agastache.

Peachy flowers are the foundation to our Romantic Plant Selection in the Dennis’ 7 Dees Bohemian Landscape Style Guide! For a touch of peach indoors, these Peachycotta LBE planters will provide a charming on-trend home for your beloved houseplants.

Dark, Moody Colors

Mysterious and sophisticated, dark tones in flowers and foliage add just the right amount of drama to planting beds and containers. Garden Media 2024 Trends Report correctly noted the broad embrace of dark tones as one of the strongest trends for the coming year.

We recommend weaving tall, airy dark perennials like Chocolate Tip Burnet, Red Dragon Persicaria, or Hillside Black Beauty Actaea into existing plantings to add depth to garden beds. You can also use darker foliaged trees and shrubs like Chocolate Mimosa or Black Lace Elderberry to punctuate beds with height and perfectly balance both drama and delicacy. Use dark leaves of Obsidian Heuchera in containers along with black Pansies and Petunias for a gothic moment.

Dark flowers and foliage plants are featured heavily in the Moody Plant Palette of our Bohemian Landscape Style Guide!

2. Landscaping to Create Welcoming Spaces

Landscapes are being recreated to welcome visitors (both human and insect) and to bridge indoor aesthetics with outdoor areas.

Pandemic-era gardening of 2020 and the years that followed saw a heavy focus on creating backyard retreats and spaces to safely gather that felt secluded and private. But as the world continues to open, so do our gardens. Recent investments in curb appeal and front landscaping means that we are once again ready to embrace guests in our homes and gardens.

Porchscaping

Porchscaping, or intentionally styling and planting your front porch area and containers to reflect the seasons, is a rapidly growing trend. We love porchscaping because it’s the best way to make a big impact with a relatively small investment. Front porches, decks, and even balconies are all excellent candidates for a regular refresh and by using colors that are echoed in your home, you’ll make your spaces feel cohesive and intentional.

Porchscaping is all about creative expression and reinvention—these are high-value choices that you’ll see every day and that every visitor will appreciate. When you rework your porch area, you can shuffle around pottery, add annuals and fresh plants to containers and nearby beds, and graduate perennials and centerpiece thrillers to other garden spaces and containers that may not suit your scheme that season. Find seasonal porchscaping inspiration here!

Wildlife-Friendly Gardening

Eco-friendly gardening and paying attention to water consumption, use of inputs, or use of non-native plants is all gaining momentum as gardeners strive to be more environmentally-conscious in their spaces. But no area of sustainable gardening has grown as quickly or is as easily achievable as wildlife-friendly gardening.

By selecting plants that provide habitat and food for birds and insects, you’ll create a garden that is both beautiful and useful. Pollinator plants should be chosen to bloom all year long (yes, even in Winter!) and should come in a range of flower sizes and shapes. Create habitat for birds and insects by leaving up the architectural stems of plants even after flowers fade and waiting to clean up the garden until Spring when new growth starts to push.

3. Plants for Better Blooms & More Texture

“Right plant, right place” might be an old bit of gardening wisdom, but it has never felt more relevant. Fussy, high-maintenance plants are on the outs, and new introductions of familiar favorites that are bred for more disease resistance and easier care are all the rage.

Pair classic plants with more foliage-forward perennials and shrubs and add in a few unusual blooms for texture to make your landscape feel fresh and current. We love how gardens that mix new plants in with older existing shrubs instantly become more dynamic and diverse.

Fragrant Roses

Roses have undoubtedly been on the rise for the past few years, and 2024 looks to be much the same. With better varieties for longer bloom time, better disease resistance, increased vase life, and shapes that help support pollinators, not to mention stronger, intoxicating fragrance, there has never been a better time to add a rose to your garden.

We are in love with new introductions like Cosmic Clouds from Weeks Roses and David Austin’s Elizabeth and can’t wait to carry them in 2024! Each year we curate a selection of roses that promises to hit all of the current trends and add unmatched fragrance to your garden, while still providing you with excellent tried and true selections from years’ past.

Textural Plants

Whether revitalizing older plantings or starting a garden from scratch, gardeners are increasingly drawn to plants for their foliage and texture. Where gardens in the past may have centered around plantings that focused on form and structure, a more modern approach uses plants for movement and flow and to help balance the strong edges of hardscapes.

What we love about textural plants is that you aren’t just limited to grasses like Japanese Forest Grass and Carex or stronger perennials like Hostas and Cannas. Even evergreen plants like conifers are being appreciated more for their unusual needles and odd shapes rather than their static or columnar presence. Some of the best conifers for texture are Carsten Wintergold Mugo Pine, Duke Gardens Yew, and Skylands Oriental Spruce.

Visit Our Nurseries, Garden Centers & Plant Shops!

Eager to explore the next best thing in gardening? Each of our Portland-area nurseries are open year-round and carry a fantastic selection of new and unusual plants alongside tried and true classic plants. We can’t wait to show you latest and greatest plants for Pacific Northwest gardens!