Happy New Year! Now that we’ve said goodbye to 2023 and have moved into the first month of 2024, many of us across the US and Canada are planning our gardens and looking forward to spring. Even if you’re dealing with cold, snow, and frost, never fear—the warmer months will return. With that in mind, we’d like to take a moment to talk about gardening in 2024, and the various garden trends, garden tools, and weather considerations that we’ll encounter this year. So, brush off the New Year’s Eve glitter, put away the Christmas lights, and let’s dig in!
First off, 2024 is going to see a return of bold choices in ornamental garden design. This will mean a variety of things for folks into ornamentals and landscaping. We’ll be seeing a wider color palate for annual flowers—expect more dark-colored blooms, even black flowers. This can be a lot of fun, as it provides a dramatic contrast to typical garden design and the usual choices in house colors. Along with, and maybe as an extension of, this trend, we also expect to see more gardeners exploring the world of hortifuturism. Drawing inspiration from science fiction, futurism, and other hyper-modern design elements, hortifuturism embraces visually-striking plants, night gardens, three-dimensional garden design, and bold light choices to create a futuristic feeling ornamental garden. This can be a welcome and fun change, allowing gardeners to play with new plants, new lighting and decorative choices, and other “edgy” elements in their decorative spaces.
For vegetable gardeners, 2024 will bring some changes in plant selection as well. At Gardzen we’ve long been advocates for heirloom varietals and native plants, and we’re pleased to report that this trend is on the rise this year. Gardeners across North America are increasingly interested in using heirloom seeds to grow interesting varietals of their favorite vegetables and fruits, and decorative.
gardeners are also increasingly embracing native plants, pollinator gardens, and “wild” spaces in their landscaping. We’re so happy to see all of this—it’s better for us, our gardens, and the ecosystems to which we all belong! There’s also no reason why these trends can’t happily co-exist with more dramatic landscaping and hortifuturism, so get creative and make something special happen this year.
Gardeners of all types and in all parts of the world will be coping with changing weather patterns in 2024—the most visible manifestation thus far being the recent changes in the USDA hardiness zone map. While local conditions vary and the weather is as always unpredictable, in general we’ll all be dealing with warm climates, hotter summers, and long periods of intense weather. This obviously effects gardening, and we’ll all have to reassess our plant choices, pollination issues, irrigation plans, and landscaping design in order to adjust to the changing world in which we find ourselves. We’ll be sharing info, tips, and tricks in this blog, so please stay tuned as 2024 unfolds.
We’re also seeing a resurgence of interest in urban gardening and patio gardening, which means that container gardens are growing in popularity this year. There’s a wonderful flexibility to container gardening—you can turn almost any space that gets some light into a garden and grow a surprising variety of flowers, shrubs, vegetables, and more in whatever usable space you have. Container gardening opens up possibilities like indoor gardening, hanging gardens on porches and patios, and other ways of gardening in unorthodox or overlooked spaces. We’re only limited by space and imagination, so if you’re a city-dweller think about starting a container garden in this new year!
There will be more to come—gardening is a growing and evolving field. We’ll do our best to keep you posted, and though we’re a little late to the party we wish you all a very happy new year from all of us at Gardzen. There are great things coming in 2024, and we’re grateful to have you as part of our community!
Leave a comment