Take on Trends for 2022

The Arbiter of style in the gardening world, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, sets pur garden trends each year. This year it confirmed an overarching trend for more sustainable, biodiverse gardens with bee-friendly rewilding. Easy-to-look-after meadows that come with a loud message — to stop mowing our lawns, leaving them to grow naturally to entice the birds and bees into the beautiful meadow-like overgrowth. Sarah Mead sums up the current zeitgeist saying, 'Nobody's perfect, and a garden shouldn't be. It should be about going with nature and letting the seasons show.' At the same time, Marie-Louise Agius' climate awareness Cop26 Garden also advocated the importance of wildlife-friendly plants, with a message, 'Look after your soil and don't be too tidy.' While Alan William's Parsley Box Garden showcased a beautiful outdoor dining room enveloped in abundant planting, creating a wonderful sense of privacy mixed with edible plants, which he says are 'fun to have at easy picking distance.'

The Horticulture Sector Trends for 2022 announced by the Flower Council of Holland have recently revealed their style trends in flowers and plants we will be tapping into over the coming year. At the top of the list is: a fresh start and new beginnings for a post-pandemic world in a state of flux. They see lots of white, sustainability, climate solutions, decluttering, and biodegradable materials that put the planet first. As we move away from a 'more is more' attitude to a 'less is more' appreciation; away from constantly seeking newness to the more enduring quality of inner well-being we are becoming more attentive to the origin of our purchases and more respectful of the environment, buying less and better quality, locally sourced products, and in supporting a circular economy with zero waste. One of the biggest trends we'll see is 'rewilding' - creating a natural wildlife haven within our outdoor spaces. If you're a fan of a more manicured garden, don't fret; you don't have to turn your whole space wild, a meadow chic aesthetic allows for a more modern and organised allocation of wildness for the neatfreaks among us.

Start small by dedicating a small area in your garden as a mini meadow. Essentially, this means planting a selection of wildflowers and letting them stay more or less untamed—which is excellent news for those who prefer a low-maintenance garden, as it requires very little upkeep! If you have a lawn, think about not mowing it so often and rather cut a meandering pathway through it, creating a secret hideaway within it, and picnic with the new wildlife inhabitants that will be sure to quickly take up residence. Neat gardens and green lawns may look beautiful, but they're a green desert in terms of being a habitat for wildlife and one of the least sustainable aspects of any garden. Leaving it wild will not only look good, it will help them cope better with drier summers and wetter winters. Wildflowers will quickly appear, and where there are wildflowers, there's wildlife.

THINK SUSTAINABLY

Sustainability influences our everyday choices more and more. Collecting rainwater, using peat-free compost, (or better yet, making your own), propagating plants from seeds and cuttings, ditching plastic and recycling all help towards sustainable living. As does dressing your spaces with natural, organic, and refound objects for interest and texture.

GO NATURAL

Lose the chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilisers, and go organic, once more following the lead from the 2021 Chelsea Flower Show, where Tom Massey, along with the Yeo Valley Head Gardener, Sarah Mead, have created the very first all-organic show garden. Everything was grown organically, without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilisers and by using peat-free soil with a beautiful mix of perennials and ornamental grasses, meadowland and woodland with birch, willow, medlar and quince trees, Mendip stone boulders and charred logs borrowed from Yeo Valley's farmland. Accompanied by a stream, flowing alongside a stepping-stone pathway, leading to a beautifully crafted hanging egg-shaped oak hide by Tom Raffield.

EDIBLE GARDENS

In a crisis, we turn to the 'good life' and grow our own. Integrating edible plants into ornamental landscapes has increased through the pandemic, more so as we realise that edible gardens can be beautiful and can be achieved almost anywhere: in a front garden, on a terrace, a roof, or even on our windowsills.

CUTTING GARDENS

Pick-your-own-flower gardens are a new take on the kitchen garden. And what better way to beautify our lives than with an abundance of sustainable flowers.

Dobbies Sail Shade Gazebo

Anji Connell

Landscape and Interior Designer

www.anjiconnellinteriordesign.com

@anjiconnell_acidplus

CONTAINER GARDENS

This year’s Chelsea Flower Show introduced a container garden section showing that even the tiniest of spaces can become more biodiverse. Courtyards, balconies, window boxes, containers, and hanging baskets all offer an opportunity for rewilding—that makes a positive impact on the ecosystem.

ADD WATER

A water feature or pond will add a whole new dimension to the ecosystems in your garden - even a small pond will bring toads who love to eat slugs. Water is vital too for swallows, swifts and amphibians such as frogs and toads, and insects as well as dragonflies, damselflies, and water boatmen.

COLOUR IN THE GARDEN

We'll see and enjoy pastel tones of pink, blue, mint green, and pale orange, alternated with more vivid accents, with coral red playing a fresh and softening role and neo mint is forecasted to take the starring role for 2022. Pantone's colour palette for 2022 mimics the colours of nature with soft, neutral, and peaceful cool greys, crystal clear blue, oyster beige, limestone chalk, opaline green, and a raw suede-like colour, sodalite and smoked brown. Australia's largest paint manufacturer, Haymes Paint, has launched their 2022 colour palette, 'Awakening', the Volume 15 colour library, to inspire us to embrace change, feel grounded and reinvigorated with powdered blues, shades of sunset pinks, aqua greens, and mustard yellows that bring a sense of fun and lively energy.

Alan Williams Parsley Box Garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021

Concept Manager, Wendy Rennie of Haymes Paint rightly points out that, ‘Our homes now play a multi-faceted role, and they need to offer everything we could once find externally through travel, work, and social gatherings.’ The new palette features deep forest greens and aqua water blues to help elevate moods and create a positive and secure feeling. I suggest adding a pop of colour in cushions, throws, and rugs or a significant piece of furniture to add a bit dynamism to the mix.

NATURAL MATERIALS

Our garden furniture will be more sustainable, locally sourced and beautifully crafted with a more organic form in natural materials, including bamboo, cane, rattan, and plaited wicker rope. For fabrics, texture is king with lots of feel-good linens and upholstery fabrics in coarser weaves. Warmth comes from natural woods, tree stumps, petrified wood and natural stone.

BOHO CHIC

The bohemian, boho-chic aesthetic will remain strong through ’22, with cool swinging chairs and daybeds that celebrate an ethnic-chic spirit and lots of hanging string lights.

It's time to get outside and enjoy our best alfresco summer, celebrating life with friends and family, surrounded by nature and wildlife - from our neo mint loungers, of course!

Garden Club London