As the year draws to a close, we garden writers begin receiving notices about the fresh trends for the garden in the coming year. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s list of all that is new for the New Year arrived yesterday. For nearly 200 years the PHS, as it is commonly known, shared its top 10 gardening trends for 2026. These trends, as forecast by horticultural experts at PHS, are geared to “reflect the ideas, practices, and emerging aesthetics poised to influence gardeners across the country in the year ahead.” These include urban orchards, houseplants are still big news, maxed out garden design (i.e. more is more), and, rather disturbingly for those of us who prefer to make our own mistakes, gardening with AI.
Also presented as a top trend was ‘rewilding’, an approach to native plant gardening that advocates for transforming landscape into a semblance of its natural, pre-gardened condition by eliminating or controlling non-native species. One could say that this is the latest spin on the trend to native gardening, limiting your plant palette to growing only that which is native to your locale. The design of such gardens takes many forms, as I Iearned by watching a streamed panel discussion presented by the Museum of Garden History, in London, England. The discussion centered on The New Beautiful, a recently published book from Gardens Illustrated magazine, aka the Vogue of horticulture. It and the talk’s panelists looked at the work of a new breed of gardeners who were applying a deep and thoughtful knowledge of plants and ecology to fashion gardens that rely on keystone species augmented by “blow ins”, by observing what plants do and don’t do in and out of their natural habitats, and what constituted those habitats. This garden practice is inspired by the need to support biodiversity, as encouraged by the burgeoning European rewilding movement that aims to reintroduce dwindling populations of native fauna to their natural habitats.
The old adage “history repeats itself” came to my mind given my fascination and reference to garden history. Thus, my hand reached for two books: first off the shelf was Siftings, by Jens Jensen, leading conservationist and landscape designer in early 20th-century America. Siftings, first published in 1939, was his manifesto, and he was recognized as a leader of the Prairie School of architecture and design. Jensen was particularly engaged with the Midwestern prairies; if you’re familiar with the state park systems of Illinois or the Indiana Dunes or some of Wisconsin’s parks, you will have experienced his work firsthand. He wrote:
“To me no plant is more refined than that which belongs. There is no comparison between native plants and those imported from foreign shores, which are, and shall always remain so, novelties.” Every plant, wrote Jensen, “has its fitness and must be placed in its proper surroundings so as to bring out its full beauty. Therein lies the art of landscape.”
A little over a decade earlier, appeared My Wild Flower Garden: The Story of a New Departure in Horticulture by Herbert Durand issued in 1927. A retired journalist, he used a borrowed quote to describe his garden as “not a garden that has run wild, reminding us of man’s neglect; it is a poetic suggestion of the beauty of Nature untouched by man.” And while the garden may have been poetic, his text is a determinedly practical guide. Durand was not limiting himself to the flora of upstate New York where his new, post-retirement, garden was taking shape; his focus was on gathering native American plants from regions where soil and climate corresponded to his own. One chapter titled Some Beautiful Strangers focused on the native plants of the Rocky Mountain region. He was particularly enamored of the penstemons of the Colorado foothills. When he was writing, there were 148 known species of penstemon, one native to Siberia and the remaining to North America, but only two offered by American plantsmen. That has changed considerably in the intervening decades thanks to sources like Plant Select who specialize in flora of the high plains and intermountain West.
You may have heard of Kelly Norris. He is the former director of the Des Moines Botanical Garden, but his focus now is as a landscape designer and author of New Naturalism: Designing and Planting a Resilient, Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden, described as “a guide to creating beautiful, low-maintenance gardens that mimic natural ecosystems like prairies and woodlands, focusing on ecological function, plant layers, and supporting wildlife.”
Mark Twain claimed there was no such thing as a new invention, just a “mental kaleidoscope”, each turn casting “the same old pieces of colored glass” into a different pattern. In short, what’s old is new again. But isn’t that what keeps life interesting? Certainly, these advancing trends in garden making are just what’s needed for our times.
©Ethne Clarke, 2025
The books mentioned in this story would make perfect gifts for the gardener in your life… at any time of year:
Siftings is available from the publisher, John Hopkins University Press. https://tinyurl.com/dx7j7k3y
The New Beautiful from https://tinyurl.com/dx7j7k3y
New Naturalism from https://www.kellydnorris.com/store/p/new-naturalism
My Wild Flower Garden is available from online used booksellers.