Newhouse News Service
Beef up the patio. Hold the chemicals. And garnish the yard with high-performing, low-work plants and a dash of organically grown vegetables.
That's the menu of gardening trends as we head into 2008.
Here's a quick look ahead to what's in and what's out on the gardening scene:
What's in
• Anything "natural" or "organic."
• Composting yard waste.
• Recyclable rice pots.
• Native and no-spray plants.
• Compact, low-maintenance plants.
• Plants with long-lasting blooms, colorful leaves and multiseason interest.
• Varied plantings aimed at attracting birds, bees and butterflies.
• Lots of landscape color, especially orange, gold, mango and similar "warm" tones.
• Rain barrels and conserving water.
• Rain gardens.
• Do-it-yourself landscape projects (at least the planting part).
• More elaborate and fully furnished patios.
• Small-scale, organically grown home vegetable and herb gardens.
• Container gardening, including changing the plantings throughout the four seasons.
• Pondless water features (moving water empties into a buried vault instead of a surface pond).
• Sweeping, curved garden beds.
What's out
• Chemical sprays.
• Bagging leaves and grass clippings.
• Plastic pots.
• Non-native plants that might become invasive.
• Plants that take a lot of pruning or spraying.
• Boring or "two-week wonder" plants that don't change with the seasons.
• Big lawns and the same old few plant types everyone else has.
• Bland beds with little more than boxed or balled evergreens.
• Running sprinklers indiscriminately.
• Piping rainwater ASAP into the gutters.
• Hiring a company to do entire landscape improvements from A to Z.
• A basic concrete patio or deck with a table and stand-alone grill.
• Large vegetable gardens that take a lot of digging, hoeing, weeding, etc.
• Packing all the flower pots away at the end of October.
• Free-formed, hand-dug, clean-out-once-a-year water gardens.
• Squared-off garden bed.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
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