Pinterest were predicting home hub to be another key trend for 2020 and with more people working from home it is still incredibly popular. Adding home offices, lots more technology, particularly smart homes and home theatre but also garden rooms, lots of greenery inside and out from green walls, lots of planting from feature shrubs, to house plants and growing micro greens and herbs in the kitchen.

Green wall at Musee Quai Branly by Patrick Blanc

Garden rooms can be anything from adding a conservatory or orangery style room, using your garden to create an outdoor room or simply adding some extra greenery to the house. The style of an outdoor room according to this trend is very much secret garden, after all there is a new film version of the book out this year. It’s all about creating a sanctuary just for you, think lots of vertical greenery with trees, feature shrubs and climbers to give that feeling of being cocooned from the outside world. In smaller spaces pleached or standard trees are brilliant with their narrow trunks allowing for underplanting but still providing an element of privacy. Alternatively wrapping scented climbers around the boundaries create that feeling of a secret space while filling the air with their perfume from roses such as the vibrant pink of Gertrude Jekyll or the delicate white of Desdemona to honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum‘Heaven Scent’, the name alone says it all. Along with plenty of shrubs to keep the greenery going throughout the year, from the winter flowering Christmas box (Sarcoccoa confusa) to lavender (Lavandula angustifolia‘Munstead’ or ‘Hidcote’) in summer.

Pleached trees in a Parisian garden

Inside or out green walls are very much part of this trend whether covering an entire building wall installing a green wall system complete with irrigation or simply adding climbers up against a wall or fence. Inside pot plants can be added to shelves to give the feeling of a green wall, adding a few to existing book shelves or giving the shelves over completely to plants, house plants can become completely addictive. Once one or two have been purchased being drawn to new plants seems to become an automatic instinct whether wandering around the supermarket or garden centre and there are some amazing specialist shops dedicated to them. You start with a Chinese money plant (Pilea peperomioides) or sneak an orchid into your shopping basket and before you know it there are maidenhair ferns (Adiantum raddianum‘Fragrantissimum’) and Swiss cheese plants (Monstera deliciosa) taking over the house.

Climbing roses, ideal around a seating area

A simple way of adding more greenery to your life and all part of the trend is to grow a few micro greens, salad crops or a few pots of herbs on a kitchen window sill. A tray of fresh small leaves to jazz up a salad or a few pots of herbs, whether growing the traditional basil, parsley or thyme found in supermarkets or using it as a great excuse to try out a few new or less hardy varieties, which could be anything from Thai basil, to unusual chillies or lemon verbena. Most micro crops and herbs grow fairly quickly from seed and make a great introduction to plants and gardening for children, as they get to watch the seeds shooting up and the leaves starting to unfurl.

About the Author

Camilla Grayley is a garden designer based in York, mainly working in and around Yorkshire but has travelled up and down the UK to design gardens and is always happy to travel to help clients with their gardens. I love creating gardens with strong architectural outlines softened by voluminous planting that draws on year round interest, ensuring there is something to capture the eye whatever the season. Gardens should always evoke all the senses from the colour palette on the eye, to the rustling of plants swaying in the wind to the amazing perfumes that can be inhaled, whether on a summer’s evening or the depth of winter.

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