George’s Garden Predictions

March 4th, 2025

   This week’s futuristic-leaning Philadelphia Flower Show is exploring the theme of “Gardens of Tomorrow.”

Will this be the prevailing new landscape look? I don’t think so.

   Many of the show’s landscapers, florists, and student display-builders are interpreting where they see plants and gardening heading.

   The theme also got me thinking about gardening’s future in our little corner of the world.

   I think it’s possible to make some educated guesses because a.) so much of gardening tends to run in cycles, and b.) we’re seeing some signs already of where the future leads.

   Example: gardening for the birds, bees, and other pollinators is a big trend lately, but if you look back to the early 1900s, it was all the rage then, too.

   Vegetable gardening proliferated during COVID, but it’s been tapering off lately – just as it did after the last major veggie-growing boom during World War II.

   And “OK” lawns are OK again – even populated with clover as was the case in the 1940s before the lush, perfect, green-carpet lawn came into vogue.

   So where are we headed now in the garden? I’ll go out on a limb and make these predictions:

   1.) Meadows, pollinator gardens, and similar “wild” gardens soon will fall back out of popular favor as people realize these gardens often get weedy and attract unwanted wildlife (i.e. ticks and rodents) as well as wanted wildlife (i.e. birds and butterflies).

   I’m not sure the majority of gardeners ultimately prefer a wilder look to a more colorful, neater one either.

   2.) Native plants are all the rage now, but I suspect the cry will die back into a sort of balanced mainstream in which non-invasive, non-natives are accepted and planted equally alongside natives.

   In the long run, what will win out are plants that are good-looking, high-performing, low-care survivors – no matter their origin.

   I think the avoid-the-invasives push will stick, and I think we’ll end up with more native plants in the garden than now, but I don’t see most people gravitating toward yards that are all or mostly natives.

   3.) I suspect the COVID boom in veggie gardening will burn out even sooner.

Vegetable gardens are too much work and take too much time for most people.

   It was heartening to see so many younger gardeners embrace growing their own food to the point where good, old-fashioned dirt gardening became hip. But the truth is that vegetable gardening is hard. It takes much work, you get dirty, you sweat while weeding in the heat of summer, and a lot can go wrong (bugs, animal marauders, diseases, etc.)

   In the long run, I suspect all but the most devoted will decide a.) they’re too busy, b.) they’re too invested in other things, and c.) it’s a whole lot easier to just buy food at the grocery store.

   For most of those same reasons, I don’t see lots of new people embracing landscape upgrades or gardening in general.

   4.) Lots of people see lawns as ecological wastelands these days and are pushing to shrink and/or eliminate lawns in favor of meadows and native-plant gardens.

   While I think the anti-lawn movement will continue for at least a few more years, I suspect the landing point will be a moderate compromise somewhere between lawns-are-evil and the perfect green-carpet ideal.

   I think most people like and want some lawn space, but I also think most would be fine ditching the expensive and not-so-eco-friendly burden of all of those fertilizers, weed-killers, crabgrass-preventers, and irrigation systems.

   5.) Two other previously popular gardening styles that have fallen out of favor are roses and water gardening.

   I don’t see either of those making a big comeback anytime soon, even though lots of new roses have come along lately that have largely solved their disease issues and that bloom much longer.

   What I think might give roses a bit of a bump is if someone can breed roses that are completely and truly thornless while retaining their looks, long bloom, disease-resistance, and fragrance. Roses have a lot going for them, but bloodshed in the garden is something that most gardeners try hard to avoid.

   As for water gardening, the main obstacles there are a.) cost to install, b.) a fear in young families that their kids will fall in, and c.) it’s a whole different style of gardening that most people have no idea how to navigate. I don’t see any of those changing.

   6.) To replace the above burnouts, I see the next big push being how to garden in the new climate.

   Like it or not (or believe it or not), the conditions we’re gardening in today are functionally different than just a few decades ago when I first started gardening.

   Winters are warmer, summers are hotter, and worst of all, the weather is more extreme and more erratic than it used to be. All of that is affecting what we can plant, when we can plant it, and how our plants perform when the temperatures see-saw dramatically, when increasing damaging storms hit, and when flash droughts are interspersed with flash floods.

   As our traditional timing and plant selections falter, I think people will pay more attention to shifting toward plants that do well in the coming climate – not the past one – and ones that are best at rolling with the punches.

Read George’s PennLive column on “gardening in the new normal”

   7.) Garden writers like me will become obsolete. Between ever-growing bodies of online information and the arrival of AI chatbots that answer gardening questions, who needs a live person?

   I also see people moving more and more toward getting their info via video vs. reading the written word. And so I think old-school garden writers who encompass the whole of gardening and who aim to deliver unbiased pro-and-con facts will be replaced by video “influencers” who are more advocates than journalists and who specialize in one particular style or way.

   Good thing I’m already on the road to retirement!