Men in the garden: Just one of the many new outdoor trends in 2014
By Leah Brown
March 24, 2014
397
I grew up in a home that gardened. The home that looked like it was two stories deep in decorative trees, hydrangea bushes, ornamental grasses, small pine trees and enough perennials to cause allergy attacks down the block.
Houses like that are familiar to all of us. If it wasnt your own home, it was a neighbors or a family members.
However, modern gardening doesnt have to look like it costs an arm and a leg to buy and a full-time staff to maintain. The trends for 2014 feature techniques like cost-effective solutions, small-scale gardening and eco-friendly practices.
There are plenty of lists and informational articles available online detailing the trends for the 2014 growing season and how to pull them off in your own space. Depending on the article, there are numerous innovative gardening projects to try. But the most buzzy topics are economically conservative gardening, men in the garden and creating more outdoor entertaining space.
Conservative gardening has been taken up by many to avoid rising produce and food costs and smaller paychecks. Gardeners are trying to save money with the work they put into the garden. Although this trend started as a way to save money, the conservative mindset has seeped into other aspects of keeping a garden. Flowerbeds and vegetable patches are getting smaller. Fruits and veggies, as well as herbs and spices, dont have to be grown in a 20-by-20-foot patch. Growing can be done indoors in a pot or on the porch with a hay bale. Not only are they smaller, plants that take less work for more gain are becoming popular. So, not only are gardeners conserving space and money, they are saving time.
The second trend may surprise you. Men in the garden, you ask? But its no joke. Because there are more stay-at-home dads than ever and gardeners are choosing edible options, men spend time growing their own food for their household. Anything that can be used in a backyard barbecue are top choices, while hot peppers, asparagus, rosemary and other grillable options are popular.
Male gardeners have helped grow the third big trend of 2014, entertaining outdoors. Outdoors spaces, especially in urban areas, are becoming a commodity. People want to entertain outdoors, but they dont just want to sit on some stumps in a yard. Gardeners have been creating whimsical outdoor spaces that use ornamental tables, benches, potted plants and even chandeliers to make the garden a comfortable and inviting place to have a gathering. Gardeners are also creating whimsy with curved lines, geometric shapes, untrimmed explosions of blossoms and color-blocked beds. The emphasis for 2014 rests on freestyle growing, not regimented and trimmed planting.
Gardening techniques are changing and they wouldnt be complete without an app or piece of technology to go with them. If you need help planning your planting times down to the day or your planting spaces down to the individual flowers in each pot, there is an app for that. Websites like Natures Notebook (www.usanpn.org/natures_notebook) allow gardeners from all over the country to communicate ideal planting times, when their produce is fully mature and when their flowers are blooming. The Virtual Container Designer app by Suntory is an easy way to experiment with different pots and flowers before actually committing to any one style.
When the sun finally brings spring with it, try one of these trends in 2014. With a little time and effort you will add livable space to your house, have a relaxing new pastime and even see some extra green in your wallet.
