Top 10 Garden Trends for 2025

A new year brings fresh opportunities to connect with nature, and gardeners are uniquely positioned to make a positive impact on the environment. With increasing awareness of changing environmental conditions, now is the perfect time to adopt sustainable practices that beautify your surroundings while supporting the planet.

Whether you’re planting to attract pollinators, conserve water, or create a vibrant haven in your backyard, the choices you make can inspire change and contribute to a healthier world. Let’s explore the top gardening trends for 2025 that can help you make a difference—and create a garden that truly thrives.

How Can You Help?

Attention backyard gardeners! YES, YOU—can help in many ways! Here are the Top 10 Gardening Trends for 2025…and beyond.

1. Plant pollinator-friendly gardens to attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.

2. Plant drought-tolerant gardens, selecting plants that have minimal moisture requirements.

3. Conserve water by watering smartly, utilizing an efficient and inexpensive drip system. Adding a timer will make it even more economical.

4. Avoid the use of chemical pesticides that can kill those all-important pollinators.

5. Advocate for earth-friendly gardens with your friends, family, and community.

6. Grow organically, depending upon natural fertilization, rather than chemical.

7. Garden sustainably, using the resources wisely to avoid depletion or permanent damage.

8. Decorate your balcony. Growing in containers will support our pollinators the same as growing in a yard.

9. Select native plants to your area. These will require less water with low maintenance.

10. Grow vertically to save space and maximize your harvest.

Pollinator-Friendly Plants

Planting a variety of blooming plants that will attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds will result in a vividly colored, dynamic, cheery landscape. We recommend that you plant a variety with different bloom times to ensure non-stop seasonal color and pollinator nectar.

Plants for Butterflies

• Asters: These daisy-like flowers, also known as Michaelmas Daisies, come in shades of lavender, pink, and white, all with a happy yellow center. Aster plants thrive in full sun to partial shade with well-draining soil. Blooming from summer to fall, Asters may still be blooming when other plants’ blossoms have faded.

• Monarda (Bee Balm): Though more commonly called Bee Balm, these frilly flowers also have a love affair with butterflies. Fancy red, pink, and purple blossoms are available. Thriving in full sun to partial shade, Monarda plants prefer their soil a little moist, but well-draining. Deer and rabbits will not be feasting on these perennial plants, and they will provide vibrant color from mid-summer to early fall.

• Lantana: These perennial flowering plants are as happy in containers as they are in the garden, so if you do not have space for flowers in your landscape, you can attract butterflies and other pollinators to your patio or deck! Bearing clusters of petite blossoms, these blooms emerge one color and morph to another, the result being a rainbow of colors on one plant. In addition to butterflies, Lantana plants will attract hummingbirds, will bloom from spring to fall, and are drought-, heat-, and salt-tolerant.

• Buddleia (Butterfly Bush): Referred to as the Butterfly Bush, Buddleia plants are highly fragrant, available in a myriad of colors, and will also attract bees and hummingbirds. Its drought-tolerance and low maintenance requirements make it a favorite among gardeners who are planting pollinator-friendly gardens. Perennial Buddleia plants grow rapidly into a deciduous perennial shrub, reaching heights and widths up to 5 feet. Butterfly Bush will be in bloom from June through October.

Plants for Bees

One bee colony can pollinate up to 300 million flowers in a day. One single bee can visit up to 63,000 blossoms in its life cycle, which is relatively short, unless you are the Queen Bee! This time is counted in weeks or just a few months, depending upon the type of bee.

• Marigolds: The pom-pom-ish blossoms of the Marigold plant are found in hues of yellow, orange, and red, with some being beautifully bi-colored. Marigolds are adaptable to many soil types, as long as they are well-draining. Blooming prolifically for the entire summer, they also require only moderate watering. In addition to attracting bees, Marigold plants repel at least 9 different damaging insects that invade vegetable gardens and other plants. Use them as a border plant for natural pest control.

• Echinacea (Coneflower): This perennial is also called the Cone Flower, due to the prominent, darkly colored cone at the center of most of its daisy-ish blossoms. Where a cone is absent, you will find a stylish pom-pom! Echinacea plants are available in a wide range of colors, like butterscotch, cherry limeade, and rainbow sherbet. These deer-resistant plants bloom profusely from mid-summer through the fall and even provide winter interest for your avian visitors.

• Sunflowers: These native plants, through selective breeding, are now available in dwarf and giant varieties in a range of shades from creamy white to dramatic red. Some Sunflower blossoms are bi-colored, while a handful have halos, and others are solidly colored. You will want to plant your Sunflower plants in full sun, in well-draining soil, at the back of your gardens, or along a fence where their towering size may require support. We highly recommend providing support for the taller Sunflower plant varieties in particularly windy areas.

Plants for Hummingbirds

Many gardeners have asked why hummingbirds are considered a pollinator. Hummingbirds use their long beak to feed on nectar at the base of tubular flowers. As they feed, pollen sticks to their bodies, which they then carry to the next blossom, and the next, and the next….

• Hemerocallis (Daylily): These perennial, productive bloomers are one of the easiest to grow. Once established, Hemerocallis plants are drought-tolerant, thriving in full sun to partial shade. More widely known as the Daylily, breeders have used their imagination to create some of the most vibrantly and uniquely colored flowers conceivable. They will bloom in late spring and again in early to mid-fall. In between their blooming periods, their luscious grassy foliage creates a soft accent to other blooming plants.

• Digitalis (Foxglove): This flowering plant is an amazingly striking biennial or a short-lived perennial in the mildest climates. You will recognize the Digitalis plant, which you may know as Foxglove, by its spotted throat and gorgeous tubular blossoms. These blossoms come in white, cream, and delicious pink hues with that signature spotted throat complementing the flower color, sometimes quite dramatically. Relatively low maintenance when it comes to pruning or deadheading, Digitalis plants appreciate consistent moisture, especially when it is particularly dry. Foxglove will flower from mid-spring to early summer.

• Petunias: This versatile annual is available in a multitude of colors with complimentary-colored throats, amazingly rich colors, and with stars sprinkled on them in the Headliner™ series. You will find various blossom sizes, including mini-sized flowers. All Petunia plants can be grown in the garden or in containers, hanging or standing. You also have your choice of trailing, semi-trailing, or Petunia plants with a neatly mounded habit. Preferring cooler weather, decorate your outdoor spaces in the spring and again in the fall, where they will provide amazing color until the first frost.

Drought-Tolerant Plants

Not only will these plants survive droughty conditions that are becoming the norm with our world’s environmental shifts, but they add beauty, as well as attracting pollinators. You’ll find that many of the blooming plants mentioned above are also drought-tolerant. You CAN attract pollinators and have a low-maintenance garden.

• Zinnias: These annual flowers are one of the easiest to nurture and grow. Some even reseed themselves, kind of making them perennial in nature. Zinnia plants are so easy to grow that they are considered the ideal plant for a child’s first foray into gardening and understanding the life cycle of a plant. Heat and drought tolerant, while sporting large, long-blooming, season-long cheerful flowers, Zinnia plants check all the boxes. They can be started from seed or transplanted with the expectation that they will perform admirably…they are just that carefree!

• Lavender: This drought-tolerant perennial is fast becoming one of the most widely grown and favored plants for low-maintenance, water-conserving gardens. They fit well into cottage gardens, rock gardens…just about any garden or landscape you can think of. Wonderfully aromatic, the Lavender plant’s airy blossoms and lacy foliage calls loudly to any pollinator that happens to be in the neighborhood. Culinary uses? You betcha! However, not all lavenders are created equal. English and Spike Lavender are edible, while Spanish and French Lavender are not. Conversely, all Lavender plants are highly aromatic; we recommend you plant Lavender plants near entryways and under windows to reap the benefits of that wonderful scent in your home, as well as out.

• Verbena: This flowering sometimes annual and sometimes perennial plant has many applications, from a “spiller” in hanging baskets to a low-growing, prolifically blooming profusion of non-stop, colorful, ground cover. Once established, Verbena plants are relatively drought-tolerant and low maintenance, the just-right solution for that hill in your landscape that needs some beautiful TLC or erosion control. They are adaptable to variable sunlight conditions, though planting them in the shade may slow flower production. Our Empress® Verbena plants are perennial in nature, while our Lanai™ and Superbena® are grown as annuals, except in growing zones 8 through 11.

By embracing these trends, you can create a garden that not only flourishes but also supports the environment and pollinators around you. Together, we can cultivate spaces that are as beautiful as they are impactful.