Garden trends: summer 2024

Summer garden trends

Hortifuturism

This new term fuses technology with nature to improve plant health and make gardening more sustainable by integrating advanced technologies into garden design.

Solar powered lighting is an excellent example! In the average garden, they sustainably harvest sunlight to light our gardens for decorative purposes, but in more advanced cases they can cleverly adapt lighting conditions for plants depending on their needs.

Vertical gardens are another way that hortifuturism is helping to beautify urban spaces, maximising the limited space and using automated water and nutrient delivery systems. You could however, more easily incorporate this trend by adding a faux green wall to cut down on maintenance and expense - Britain's largest barrier to gardening.

Rainwater harvesting systems, sensory-driven soil monitors and even robotic gardeners live at the more advanced level of hortifuturism, which is becoming increasingly prominent in London. Here smart technology is helping to boost plant health, turn grey spaces green, create habitats for wildlife and improve air quality.

Take the indoors out

Since the pandemic, we've been transforming our gardens into extensions of our homes, where we can host friends with outdoor seating areas, bars and even kitchens.

This trend shows no signs of slowing down, especially during the summer, where you can reap the rewards of this new hosting space.

Decorate sofas and chairs with colourful cushions and throws including tropical prints and bold hues of yellow, orange, pink and green for an extra summery look.

Even Octavia Hill, one of the three founders of the National Trust, advocated for outdoor sitting rooms, or 'open air sitting rooms' as she called them. She believed that people, especially those living in cities could benefit from ‘the healthy gift of air and the joy of plants and flowers’.

Speaking more on the subject:

“Our lives are overcrowded, over-excited, over-strained. We all want quiet. We all want beauty. We all need space. Unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.”

To jump on this trend, consider how you would like to enjoy your own open-air sitting room.

The great thing about this trend is that you can do as little or as much as you want. On the smaller end of the scale, add a couple of chairs and a small table to a corner of your garden where you can surround yourself with outdoor plants and take in the beauty of nature.

If you have the space and budget, you can incorporate this trend on a larger scale. Full-on outdoor kitchens, bars and dining areas are popular in large gardens and are brilliant for hosting lots of friends and family throughout the summer.

Front garden love

We tend to focus so heavily on designing our back gardens, that our front gardens get left behind.

Your front garden however is arguably the more important space to focus on as it's where people will get that all-important first impression of your home, and in turn yourself! It's even proven to affect the value of your home when it comes to selling.

One of the more recent front garden trends includes ditching your lawn for a more natural approach, with people switching to wildflower meadows and native plants which need very little care to survive.

Another classic way to spruce up your front garden is to frame your front door with a pair of bay laurel trees to create a grand entrance to your home.

And if you want a quick refresh, try adding a lick of paint to your front door!

What are the RHS trends for summer 2024?

The 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show had plenty of trends that you can bring to your own garden.

Gabions for seating

Using a mixture of materials to fill gabions is a brilliant way to create walls and seats in your garden, which was seen in the Pulp Friction Garden. This trend also creates homes for lots of wildlife including all those creepy crawlies that work hard to defend your plants from pests.

Try filling your gabions with reclaimed materials including old bricks and tiles, broken crockery, mugs and gravel.

Water features

The sound of trickling water was heard throughout the show, including at The Flood Resilient Garden. Here, designers Naomi Slade and Dr Ed Barsley used galvanised water tanks of different sizes and levels to collect rainwater, creating a sustainable source for your plants, while acting as a rustic water feature to bring a sense of peace to your garden.

This can be fairly easily replicated in your own garden using water tanks and rain chains to collect the water, where it can be stored for later use.

Alternatively, install a small water feature in your garden to enjoy the calming sound of running water.

Climate-resilient gardening

With the scorching summer heat, climate change appeared to be at the front of gardeners minds.

The most noticeable impact was the shift towards using drought-resilient plants like lavender, pelargoniums and campsis, the idea being that your garden will be able to withstand the future climate and rising temperatures.

What is the summer garden colour for 2024?

Natural, earthy tones and warm hues are making a comeback this summer, helping us feel grounded and connected to nature.

This trend fits in with Pantone's colour of the year: Peach Fuzz, which they describe as "an appealing peach hue softly nestled between pink and orange."

During the summer, adopt this trend by using rich terracotta tones, golden yellows and warm shades of orange.

Use wooden furniture, terracotta planters, and orange or yellow flowers to incorporate these colour into your garden.

You can offset the warmer tones with small pops of complementary colours. In this case, go for blues or purples which sit at the opposite side of the colour wheel. Flowers like cornflowers, delphiniums and hyacinths can be speckled amongst your warm-coloured flowers for a dreamy effect.

Which plants are trendy in 2024?

Succulents

Alongside orange blooms and drought-tolerant plants, succulents are growing in popularity both indoors and out.

While you might be thinking that succulents couldn't survive the winter, you'd be wrong! Landscapers are choosing hardy varieties like Crassula and Cotyledon to bring interest to gardens, which are frost tolerant.

Fortunately, succulents are especially trendy right now! Our recent indoor plants and pots survey pin them as the second most popular houseplant, so you could always bring more fragile varieties indoors over the winter to style your home.

Feijoa

Another plant featured at RHS Hampton was the versatile Feijoa shrub. This underrated evergreen is similar in style to trending olive trees and it seems that there's nothing it can't do!

Drought-tolerant, frost resistant and happy in a range of soils, it's no wonder this fragrant shrub was popular at this year's RHS show.

Fruit trees

Sustainability and 'grow your own' is big this year, with a larger emphasis on harvesting your own fruit and veg in a bid to make our gardens more useful.

For this reason, fruit trees including apple, pear and plum trees are popular this year, along with keeping your own veg patch or even a window box.

'Starlight'

Crowned the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Year, the ornamental cherry 'Starlight' has beautiful clusters of white blossoms which open during spring and sometimes in the winter.

One of the nice features of this tree is that it's on the small side compared to other blossom trees, making it a better fit for smaller gardens, where it won't completely take over your space or block out lots of light.

Faux plants for the summer

There's two things we love at Blooming Artificial, and that is plants and summer. But what we don't love is when our high-maintenance plants get in the way of enjoying summer.

That's when our friendly family of faux plants come in handy!

These guys aren't afraid of the dark and are more than happy to go without a drink all summer long.

Better yet, they won't leave you high and dry after just a few weeks, and they look just like their natural counterparts!

Our favourites for summer include our best-selling areca palm, which is perfect for sitting indoors or keeping outside to liven up your outdoor space with exciting exotic colour.

On the flower front, our stunning summer shine window box was born to add beautiful colour to your garden, with heather, geraniums and starflowers. Meanwhile, our wild berry and geranium hanging basket means you can enjoy beautiful baskets without having to water them every five minutes! 🙄

Lastly, a top tip from our artificial plant expert, Sarah:

Pair your new 'open air sitting room', as Octavia would say, with a faux living wall to hide any unsightly fencing and bring an extra slice of the tropics to your garden this summer!

For more tips, read our guide to planning and creating a low-maintenance artificial garden.

Need advice on summer garden trends?

If you need a helping hand, get in touch with our team, or take a gander at the rest of our guidance and inspiration.