Column

14-09-2023

STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME WITH THE LATEST LANDSCAPE DESIGN TRENDS

I’m just going to say it. Terracotta! Yes, terracotta has made a comeback. For too long, it has hidden away in the shadows of the 80’s and dared not show its face in public. We have ripped it up and thrown it out. But now, its dusty warm shades are set to be big in both house and garden design trends. Pink has been with us for quite a while, and the lust for terracotta is just a natural progression of this trend.

Terracotta and its close cousin brick, can be very evocative, reminding us of the Mediterranean, another hot trend. ‘Going Greek’ may be replacing ‘Going Hamptons’ as we shift to a more organic Mediterranean style with less structured plantings. Dusty, sandy neutral tones create a feel-good, summery palette, while natural pigments inspire harmonious earth tones. The colour terracotta instils a sense of relaxation and traditional handmade craft.
This leads me to one of the biggest trends in landscape design for 2023: a focus on sustainability. With more and more people becoming aware of the impact of human activity on the environment, there is a growing interest in creating outdoor spaces that are not only beautiful but also eco-friendly. There is a growing shift away from the manicured toward the wild and naturalistic styles. Going native saves water, increases our natural biodiversity, attracts native birds, and helps to connect us to the
natural world.
Historically, hard landscaping, evergreens, and shrubs have provided a backbone for more fluid plantings of perennials and annuals, but the modern urban backyard embraces a more organic flow of drifts of plants, self-seeded surprises with ground cover planting to minimise maintenance.
Going native can also help reduce maintenance, and using plants that are drought-resistant and require minimal watering or incorporating hardscaping elements, such as gravel or mulch, to reduce the need for regular weeding.
We are looking to reconnect to nature more, and the garden is the obvious place to do this. There is a real shift from the more formal garden styles we have seen, such as the Hamptons Movement, and a desire for more natural settings where plants can sprawl and self-seed.
To the above, we can certainly add the Kitchen Garden. I think every one of my clients is looking to grow their own produce in some form or another. This is all part of the desire to reconnect to nature and to have a productive garden with produce-to-plate benefits.
If we take of this and amalgamating these trends, I see the emergence of a new, stylised cottage garden. Traditionally, the cottage garden comprised a delightful mixture of colourful flowers, a vegetable plot, a herb garden, and perhaps some chickens on a rough patch of grass – all great for biodiversity and insect life. The 21st-century cottage garden does all this and more, increasing biodiversity by introducing different planting zones, from a nutrient-poor gravel area to mixed beds, from a mini-meadow to a compost-rich vegetable plot. Productive, colourful, and uplifting, this type of garden works as well for insects and wildlife as it does for you.
So, there you have it. Terracotta is back, sustainability is in, and the cottage garden is making a grand return – a horticultural renaissance for the ages! Get ready to embrace the warm, earthy tones of terracotta and watch your garden go wild with eco-friendliness.
Visit Clark+Granger at www.cplusg.com.au or phone 0456 111 120 to find out more.