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Choose Your Favorite Trend
With every new year comes fresh ideas. Ever since the pandemic, homeowners have focused on turning their outdoor areas into everything from a home office to a staycation zone to a place for hosting holiday dinners and gatherings safely. What are the hot backyard trends for 2023? The National Association of Home Builders reported in 2022 that 58 percent of surveyed homeowners said a connection with nature or the outdoors would be top of mind in design choices. With this focus on backyards, keeping up with what’s trending can be a fun and rewarding hobby.
No matter your taste and preferences, there is a trend that will work to maximize and personalize your outdoor living space. Whether you decide to freshen up your yard with a new deck, choose a trending style like Greek or terra cotta, or opt for sustainable design, there’s a trend for every style and outdoor need.
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1. Indoor-Outdoor Merge
A top trend to look out for involves seamlessly integrating indoor and outdoor living spaces. This includes opening up the home to the garden or patio through folding glass doors and adding enclosed verandas and partially covered gardens. It also means choosing ultra-comfortable and luxe materials for outdoor furniture that feel more like indoor pieces. Popular materials include marble, granite, and metals like brass and copper. Some homeowners may also choose to place indoor furniture like plush sofas out in the garden.
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2. Greek-Inspired Touches
People are dreaming of vacations in the Mediterranean with this backyard theme. Greek-inspired gardens offer a sense of romance and history. To make Greek dreams come true, opt for Grecian statues, columns, formal hedges, archways, gravel gardens, and stone pathways. Place your existing garden containers and urns on a Greek-inspired platform, like this 15-inch plinth from Home Depot. While blue and white are the most traditional color choices, adding a pop of accent color in a mostly white garden works well, too. Plant olive trees, succulents, boxwood, and white roses, and use plants to shade seating areas.
3. Natural Stone Pathways
With both sustainability and serenity in mind, more people will choose natural stone to create walkways in their yard. This low-maintenance trick helps create a cottage-style feel and breaks up a solid lawn with added interest. Choose brushed or textured stones made of granite, porcelain, sandstone, or limestone. Broken stones are also trending, so you can make stone look natural by choosing items such as asymmetrical boulders and slabs.
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4. Plants for Privacy
Sure, fences and decorative screens can help create a secluded sanctuary, but expect to see more people choosing plants for privacy instead. Vertical planting can achieve privacy screening in small spaces by using rolling shelves, pergolas, trellises, hanging baskets, planter boxes, fence shelving, mounted containers, and pouches. For a natural looking partition, add a living wall, like this pocket hanging vertical garden wall planter, available on Amazon.
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5. Climate-Resilient Gardens
More people are now living in drought-stricken locations and facing water restrictions and other climate-related concerns. Therefore, they are turning to climate-resilient gardens to minimize water use. This could look like planting the right types of trees for a specific location. Be sure to work with a local arborist to identify the best species to ensure they suffer less stress from heat and drought conditions. It is also important to pick the best plants for a drought-tolerant garden.
6. Terra Cotta
The new Garden Trends Report from Garden Media Group declared terra cotta as the “color of the year” for 2023. Terra cotta means “baked earth,” and is a reddish-brown unglazed clay that is used to create pots and planters. Both the terra-cotta material and color are expected to play a big role in backyard design come the new year, adding a bit of a Moroccan or Mediterranean flare.
The warm and vibrant tone will help balance out all the grays and neutrals that have dominated outdoor furniture and interior home decor for some time. This trend toward natural warmth in color also might influence plant and flower choices, such as pansies and dahlias in a range of coppery hues, and plants like Sombrero Adobe Orange coneflower, Tecoma ‘Red Hot’, and Veranda Mango Rose. Of course, be sure to stock up on terra-cotta planters, like these patterned pots available on Amazon.
7. Lit Garden Sculptures
Wow guests with lit-up sculptures such as these cracked glass spheres available on Amazon, which appear as artwork in the backyard. These unique elements provide a focal point and transform the entire yard into an intriguing space. Use fixtures you have on hand to thoughtfully light up sculptures, statues, and sundials to create a conversation starter and enhance the mood of any outdoor environment.
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8. Upscale Relaxation
Since the pandemic, people often want to feel like they’re on vacation when relaxing in their own backyard. Experts find that the main reason homeowners are upgrading their backyards is to create a calming, hotel-like space. This trend is all about upscale relaxation, which involves high-quality furniture, outdoor rugs, pizza ovens, water features, elaborate firepits, covered outdoor kitchens, and more. It also entails creating a tropical vacation vibe with plants like Royal Hawaiian ‘Waikiki’ Colocasia, a ficus tree, or a potted Bird of Paradise.
9. Accessibility
The Garden Trends Report also highlights accessibility as top of mind to help those with mobility issues and aging baby boomers stay active in the garden. This looks like sturdy furniture that is easy to get in and out of and raised beds that don’t require bending over to tend. Also create firm pathways that are wide and roomy so that people in wheelchairs or those who need support walking can easily pass by.
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10. Sustainable Furniture
Consumers continue to prioritize planet Earth in their purchases, and this is expected to continue in the new year. The sustainable outdoor furniture industry is booming, with so many more choices like pieces made from bamboo, recycled plastic, rattan, and other eco-friendly materials. Another option is to repurpose, breathing a fresh life into your old pieces by using these tips.