Do the wild thing: The garden trends we’ll be seeing in 2025

If you’re looking to get your hands dirty over the next 12 months, consider including purposefully untamed gardens, small bodies of water and seasonal flower fragrances. Let these plant and garden features inspire your gardening in 2025.

Wild and free

The award-winning Greyleigh designed garden features a healthy mix of Australian plants, edibles, succulents and perennials.Credit: Owen Hall

Next year will see the continuing rise of naturalistic spaces with gardens that brim with loose, leisurely sweeps of plants that sway in the breeze and change with the seasons.

Neither stark nor static, these layered plantings include herbaceous perennials, grasses, annuals, biennials and small shrubs that reach a multitude of heights, provide year-round interest and leave no spare gaps.

The most alluring of these spaces don’t look like they are gardens at all but as if they have sprung up all of their own accord.

In this age of warming temperatures and extreme weather events, these plantings provide both a respite for people and a boon for pollinators. Choose your plants wisely, and they don’t even require that much irrigation.

But they do need a watchful eye and a steady hand. The fact that these gardens are always evolving is one of the most rewarding things about them, but it does necessitate the need for regular reappraisal to keep them looking their best. Turn your back and the most thuggish plants will cramp out daintier ones and swallow up all the diversity. Aim for a rich, bountiful feel but not all-out chaos.

Reusing your rubbish

This Berlin garden designed by Anselm Reyle, Tanja Lincke and Das Reservat incorporates sculpture made from concrete found on site.Credit: Claire Takacs

Tempted as you might be to dispose of any building waste or rubble lingering on your property there is another way. Landscape designers are increasingly incorporating everything from smashed concrete to roofing tiles and plumbing pipes into their gardens. This refuse can be spread over the ground and turned into a low-nutrient growing medium for grasses, hardy perennials and small shrubs or turned into habitat for wildlife and even ornamental benches and walls.

But using rubbish in a way that highlights its beauty takes skill. The trick is to make your arrangements look deliberate rather than dumped. By retaining clean edges and other aspects of formality the garden won’t just look like discarded scrap.

Let there be water

There is nothing that birds, frogs, dragonflies, bees and other insects like better than a pool of water.Credit: Getty Images

Even the explosion of mosquito numbers this summer hasn’t been enough to dampen our enthusiasm for water in the garden. Ponds, birdbaths and water pots can all enliven outdoor spaces with reflections, ripples and the sound of splashing. In hot weather they make everything seem cooler.

They also tie in with our current penchant for wildlife-friendly spaces because there is nothing that birds, frogs, dragonflies, bees and other insects like more than a pool of water from which they can drink, bathe or lay their eggs.

Add aquatic plants to provide havens for these animals and – if the body of water is big enough – a pump to aerate the water and help limit algal growth.

As for mosquitoes, some of the wildlife lured by your water will help keep numbers down, while for small vessels, change the water at least once a week to stop insects from breeding.

Make every space count

Planting down a small side path can be enjoyed from inside the house.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

Dark, narrow side paths are the first thing that springs to mind here, but gardens contain all sorts of against-the-odds spots that are shady, cramped or full of tree roots. While in the past we might have been tempted to ignore these areas and put all our efforts into the more promising spots, gardeners are increasingly feeling the need to make every space count.

One of the most popular solutions for tight or otherwise compromised spots is to plant up. While sophisticated green-wall equipment with recirculating irrigation systems is one option, another is to take a more DIY approach and create a screen from reinforcement mesh or another sturdy trellis-like structure on to which you can attach hanging baskets and pots. You can even wire on air plants, which, being epiphytic bromeliads, don’t need soil. By incorporating plants with a range of textures and growth habits, including some that cascade down and others that climb up, you can make the arrangement seem bounteous and luxuriant.

A scent for every season

Cultivate a sweet-smelling garden all year long.Credit: Getty Images

We spend a lot of time refining how our gardens look but with the burgeoning popularity of sensory gardens we are increasingly turning our attention to how they smell, too. Cultivate fragrant plants near paths for maximum olfactory experience, or near windows and doors so the scent can be enjoyed inside. Leave no season unscented: choose enough plants to provide a succession of different perfumes throughout the year.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.