As you will know from my previous posts, I absolutely LOVE my garden. I love spring, and cannot wait for the days to become lighter and brighter so that we can get outside and enjoy the space that we are so lucky to have created. In the winter months, our garden haven becomes a little unloved. We venture outside to play with the girls much less than we should, and so those first few months of Spring are always a bit of a catch up, returning the garden to its former glory and having a much needed tidy and spruce up so we can enjoy it to it’s full potential.
Rattan Direct recently shared their top garden trends for 2018, and I am pleased that we are able to follow most of them. The full list of trends and what they might mean for your garden can be found here, but here are the ones that I fully intend to embrace in 2018.
Wabi-Sabi
Although this may sound like something you would find in your local Chinese restaurant, Wabi-Sabi actually stands for ‘rustic’ and as a garden trend, this is all about embracing the beauty of your gardens natural imperfections. 2018 will see a big move away from plastics, and a focus on more sustainable and renewable products. This is one trend that I am confident we can follow, having built Erin a fairy garden around the natural roots of our large birch tree, and repurposing some old railway sleepers to form the basis of our outside play area.
We also love Erin’s Little Tikes playhouse, which although plastic, features plenty of energy neutral features enabling us to water our plants from rainfall, and grow our own turf and grass seed on it’s roof.
I am also not ashamed to admit that I sometimes can’t tell the difference between a plant and a weed, and as such, we have a fair few moss covered stones and overgrown grasses in our flowerbeds.
Wintercuing / Alfresco Living
This is one trend that as of yet, we haven’t fully followed, and it’s somewhat unsurprising considering the joyful British weather we get in these winter months. That said, we do love eating outside, and in the Summer I love nothing more than to eat dinner on the patio, the whole family sitting around the table with a barbeque smoking away beside us.
2018 is expected to see the arrival of more designated under cover outside dining spaces with the potential to be used all year round. With the smallest kitchen space ever known to man, this is something that in theory I would be willing to consider, particularly when you add in the idea of a gas heater, fire pit or pizza oven into the equation!
Forgetting the Seasons
Who says that a garden can’t be pretty in winter? The last trend that I think will work really well for our family is that of forgetting the seasons, and finding plants that can still introduce beauty, colour and shape into your garden all year around. We tend to focus on our spring and summer plants, and as beautiful as these annuals may be, they do leave the garden looking somewhat dishevelled and lacking in colour once the petals have faded away. This year, I am hoping to find more bright and bold perennials to feature in our flowerbeds. Whilst we may not be out in the garden as much in the Winter months, it will still be nice to see a bit of colour when I look out of my bedroom window! 🙂
What garden trends are you going to embrace in 2018??
*This is a collaborative post*
