Front garden featuring a mix of shrubs, perennials and potted plants. Joanne Dale / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Improving the front yard

If online searches are any indication, 2024 is shaping up as a boom year for front-yard improvements and re-do’s, says Diane Blazek, executive director of the National Garden Bureau.

“We saw home gardeners and decorators sprucing up their backyard spaces during COVID-19 to provide that outdoor sanctuary,” she says. “Now the front yard is getting the love.”

Blazek says NGB’s recent search of search terms turned up phrases such as garden front of house entrance,” “mailbox garden,” and “front-door transformation.”

“There are a lot of searches for compact plants to coincide with that search,” she adds, “and we see a search for plants for privacy in place of hardscapes and fencing.”

Variegated monstera. Firn / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Houseplants: The next generation

That large wave of "plant parents" that got interested in houseplants during the COVID-19 pandemic is graduating to the next step – rare and unusual houseplants.

Apparently, the more common and usual fare is no longer cutting it.

"Specialty and rare houseplants are seriously hot right now, with new plant parents shelling out serious green for their new foliage friends," writes horticulture consultant Leslie Halleck in Greenhouse Management magazine.

"Collector" plants such as variegated monsteras, dark-leaf philodendrons, and velvet-leafed anthuriums are the rage – sometimes fetching prices in the hundreds of dollars – instead of yesteryear’s cheap and basic peace lilies and snake plants.

A survey of over 1,000 people who buy houseplants found that social media is causing a big increase in demand. Novices, not plant experts, are mostly driving this demand.

Lakshmi3 / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Container gardening and hanging pots

According to research from the National Gardening Association, interest in container gardening increased by 200% from 2021 to 2022. This growth is continuing and there are no indications of it slowing down.

The latest twist, Dubow says, is containers that hang. That includes hanging baskets as well as pots mounted on fences and balconies.

Partly fueling that is the trend toward people living in more urban areas and in smaller spaces where land isn’t as available for in-ground gardening.

Garden Media Group’s 2024 Garden Trends Report says the biggest increase in container-gardening spending is coming from those in the 45-54 age group.

Brazelberry Peach Sorbet in container. Photo courtesy Brazelberry

Growing fruit at home

COVID-19 spawned a sharp and sudden rebirth in home vegetable gardens. Many of those new food growers are branching out into into home-grown fruits, says Andrew Bunting, vice president of horticulture for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the organization that runs the world’s biggest, oldest indoor flower show, the Philadelphia Flower Show.

“Growing fruit at home has gained popularity for both those with yard space and those with only container space,” he says.

Rather than traditional fruits such as apple, pear, and peach trees, the current trend is toward less common and especially native fruits such as paw-paws and American persimmons, Bunting says.

He adds that gardeners also are taking advantage of new compact versions of bush fruits, such as blueberries, strawberries, and even dwarf figs, that are geared to growing in containers.