Like other parts of our home, garden décor not only changes with the seasons but also with the times, and many aspects of garden design are fashionable and vibrant one year, before fading away the next.

Because your garden is often the first part of your home that other people will see, these trends and design cycles tend to revolve much faster than in other parts of the home and often design elements that are very popular fade away quicker than you may think.

With that in mind, here are some popular garden trends that despite their popularity are likely to disappear in the near future.

Artificial Grass

There has not been a single day since the invention of AstroTurf that it has not been a controversial part of garden designs, especially when it cannot be justified by climate or other circumstances.

In a gardening world where a greater emphasis has been put on local ecology than ever before and a lot of conventional wisdom has been challenged to a much greater degree than ever before, artificial grass is increasingly out of step with the needs of the modern garden.

Highly Regimented Lawns

Part of the reason why artificial grass is going out of fashion is that the lawn as we have known it for decades is also starting to fall out of step.

In 2021 former Gardener’s World host Monty Don courted intense controversy for arguing that people should mow their lawns less to encourage more natural diversity in their gardens, and whilst many horticultural experts responded in somewhat undignified ways, Mr Don turned out to be correct.

Once the rewilding trend finally hit its stride, it did not matter how popular neat and tidy lawns used to be. The benefits and sheer amount of life that teems through a wildflower meadow have shifted to become the norm.

Hard Landscaping

In the past, the garden-less garden was a popular way to create an outdoor space that required little to no maintenance. You had stone flags completely covering the ground, which whilst no maintenance has the same problem as artificial grass.

If you have the capability to make a garden, there are so many ways to create wild low-maintenance landscaping that it is no longer necessary to have a backyard made entirely of stone or concrete.

If you want a less grass-dominated garden, an alternative is a cascading gravel path interspersed with paths. It has the same design principle as a stone flag yard but is more natural and more pleasant to be around.

Garden Gnomes

Have garden gnomes ever been fashionable? They have always been popular but at the same time in horticultural circles they have similarly always been controversial, to the point that the Chelsea Flower Show banned them for 100 years.

Whilst they will never stop being popular, it is the case that with gardening trends moving towards more natural unpainted materials, the brightly coloured terracotta gnome stands out even more starkly than perhaps it used to.

However, knowing, how gnome trends go, even if they fade away for a while, they will come back time and time again.