I am curious every year about the trends in lawns and gardens, and the Garden Media Group is on top of it.

You may have already spotted the biggest new trend. It’s the transformation of the backyard patio into a complete outdoor garden room.

I saw evidence of this trend when I visited the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in February. One of the award-winning display gardens had it all: a gigantic gas grill with burners, an outdoor fridge, tables, chairs, heaters and even a big screen TV.

As part of this outdoor garden room concept, you can find all-weather furniture that has come a long way from the plastic woven aluminum folding chairs or canvas hammocks of my childhood. This new furniture looks almost stylish enough to be indoors and certainly provides luxurious comfort.

Plants are still part of this new outdoor living space, thank goodness. However, home gardeners are shifting to different garden styles. Gardeners are gravitating towards plants that remind them of exotic places such as a tropical island or an ocean beach. For the tropical look, you can’t go wrong with cannas and hibiscus.

Ordinary standard canna lilies look tropical with their large thick leaves and red flowers, but the newest cannas available to U.S. gardeners are astounding and exotic. A few years back, Anthony Tesselaar Plants introduced the Tropicanna var. Phasion canna. What an eye-catcher it is with brightly veined leaves in a combination of pink, yellow, red, orange and greens! Now Tesselaar has two other cannas worth noting. Tropicanna Gold has leaves with bold stripes of green and gold along with golden orange-yellow flowers with speckled throats. Even more exotic is Tropicanna Black with dark purple-black leaves and bright orange flowers.

The blowsy cottage garden full of flowers is losing favor to more sophisticated contemporary designs with strong lines and distinct angles. Look for oversized gigantic planters planted with bold plants, even trees and pampas grass, rather than smaller-scale pots stuffed with the regular colorful arrangement of annuals or perennials.

Along with the big planters and plants are super-sized garden accents. But I’m not sure a giant gargoyle staring at me from the garden would help me relax. Personally, I might try the huge planters, but I prefer a more moderately sized statue.

Another emerging trend is “eco-chic gardening” or “green gardening.” This is the use of garden products that are more environmentally friendly. This includes using coconut coir as a replacement for peat moss, building decks and raised beds with “wood” made from recycled plastic, recycling objects for garden decor and controlling “softer” pesticides like insecticidal soap and spinosad.

Gardeners also are focusing more on foliage and less on flowers. Ornamental grasses have won the favor of gardeners and landscapers, but they are beginning to favor plants with extraordinary color, such as the newest varieties of coleus and iresine. They are every bit as colorful as a flower display.

Finally, gardens are also going “small.” Because overall yard sizes have decreased, many to postage-stamp size, plant producers have started developing and marketing smaller plants. This includes more petite annuals, perennials and shrubs that will fit better into the more diminutive yards and gardens.

* Marianne C. Ophardt is a horticulturist for the Washington State University Extension Office in Benton County.

source : www.tri-cityherald.com