As garden enthusiasts, many of us look to see what the new trends are for the coming year. Monrovia, one of the nation’s largest growers of plants, trees & shrubs, conducts surveys online, in garden stores and searches connections between gardening & art, design, cooking and all the other things that make “houses” homes!
For 2025, one of those trends includes what Monrovia has dubbed, “The Modern Meadow”. Most of us think of a meadow as an expansive space filled with wildflowers, grasses and pollinators. The Modern Meadow is basically the same thing on a smaller scale, along with the advantage of using cultivars. Dubbing it a “modern” meadow sort of lends itself to giving us “permission” to remove some of the Great American lawn and create a space for all of nature to enjoy. It’s also easier to maintain. The huge upside for humans is how gardening, digging into the soil and/or simply sitting in our gardens is great for our mental health. As well as our physical health!
And so the “The Modern Meadow” is unveiled, a full sensory experience with color, movement and a connection to nature. Ah, a space to relax and renew!
Meadows are found in drier spaces, don’t choose plants that need a wet/moist environment. I recommend Native plants but that doesn’t mean you have to rule out your favorite cultivars.
Grasses give plenty of movement along with some of the taller flowering perennials such as Asters, Black-eyed Susan including cultivars, Nodding Onion, Heliopsis, Joe-pye weed and many more such as one of my favorites Agastache.
Colors for your Modern Meadow are wide open and include shades of purple, blue, orange and yellow along with white, red, bronze, green and brown too. If you can’t find what you’re looking for through these links, consider checking out Prairie Moon Nursery!
When you begin to create your new garden space take a moment to think about where filtered shadows and/or shade may fall into parts of the garden. Consider where trees, shrubs or even tall perennials might cast shade in on smaller plants. This will help you in plant selection. You might want to start out small with the option of expanding. I’ve done that many times in my gardens. Bonus, it gives me something to look forward to each year as well as not feeling overwhelmed by a project.
When designing a garden space, flowing patterns are visually more appealing than straight lines.
In terms of plants, that’s all in the eyes of the planter, however, Monrovia offered up a few of their cultivars. Little Bluestem ‘Smoke Signal’ is one of my favorites. It goes from blue/green to scarlet to deeper red/purple in fall. It tops out at about 4 ft with a 3 ft spread.
If you love pink, you’ll love Evolution Colorific Coneflower. It grows to 20 in with an 18 in spread. Sturdy stems hold blooms from late spring through fall.
And because there is nothing saying you can’t plant fruit in your Modern Meadow, here’s an everbearing strawberry with excellent heat tolerance. It’s called ‘Eversweet’ for a reason!
When choosing plants for placement consider their mature height and width, bloom times and how long they flower. Build their placement around the length of sun/shade the area receives and soil conditions. I recommend a soil test. The one I’m linking you to is the most definitive test and worth the money when you consider the price of plants.
Here’s to the (r)EVOLUTION,
The Garden Scoop
