Dig Deep: 2025 Garden Design Trends for a Sustainable, Modern Outdoor Space
Unearth the best of 2025’s garden design trends, transforming your landscape into a peaceful outdoor living space.
This year’s garden design ideas are more than trends; they’re a sustainable way to create a modern, comfortable outdoor space. In this blog post, you’ll learn about
- Modern garden ideas that look lived-in
- Sustainable gardening meets functional beauty
- 2025 popular plants to beautify your outdoor living spaces.
Modern Garden Ideas That Look Lived-In
Did you know that mature landscapes and those that look lived-in are two popular garden design trends for 2025, according to Garden Media’s 2025 Garden Trends Report?
Forget about flawless and sterile-looking landscapes. Now, you can aim for a gracefully matured style with an authentic layered look.
Nostalgia is a buzzword in 2025—where your landscape has history and conjures up memories of plants from childhood. For example, your grandmother may have loved hydrangeas. You may want to consider adding dwarf hydrangeas to your landscape this summer.
Cottage gardens have that lived-in feeling as well. If you’re not bound by HOA rules, which limit your landscaping design to a set plant list, you can create a homey feel with a cottage garden.
The history of cottage gardens began in Britain when laborers planted food gardens that included herbs for treating sickness and flowers that warded off unwanted bugs.
Cottage gardens evolved at the end of the 18th century when the British gentry transformed them into ones filled with flowers, leading to today’s cottage garden design trend.
If you want modern cottage garden ideas in your landscape, here are pro tips to get you started:
- Set a romantic tone
- Fence in your cottage garden
- Design plants and flowers tightly together with healthy soil
- Install curving garden pathways
- Go with interesting color combinations
- Add something whimsical, such as an old bicycle, statuary, and stone finials
- Go with plants that make you happy.
Read more: Garden Pathways: Unifying Your Landscape with Color & Texture
Sustainable Gardening Meets Functional Beauty
Native and drought-tolerant plants have been on every gardener’s mind for the past few years. These plants are vital for sustainable gardening.
Yet, there are other plants to consider, such as resilient plants that can handle Pennsylvania storms, climate, and seasons. Again, natives and nativars fit the bill regarding resilient plants.
For example, summersweet, winterberry, and fothergilla brighten landscapes, support pollinators, and can handle hot, dry summers. Red twig dogwood provides four-season interest with its beautiful red stems, tolerates wet soils, and produces summer berries for birds.
Another modern garden idea includes creating landscapes where biodiversity and beauty meet in your outdoor living spaces. Incorporating people and wildlife means a little less lawn and more garden designs trending toward plants, shrubs, and trees that bring backyard visitors.
Learn more: Flowerbed Maintenance: How Does Your Garden Grow
Drought-tolerant plants remain popular, especially since PA summers have been drier.
According to the drought monitor on Drought.gov, parts of Lancaster and York Counties are still in a severe drought. Other areas of south-central PA are in a moderate drought or are abnormally dry.
Again, Pennsylvania native flowers to the rescue! They provide beauty, sustainable gardening, and invite pollinators into your outdoor living spaces. They’re also low-maintenance and don’t need the same amount of water to live as non-natives.
2025 Popular Plants to Beautify Your Outdoor Living Spaces
In 2025, this year’s popular plants bring beauty, functionality, and sustainability to the garden.
We recommend the following native plants to invite pollinators into your outdoor living spaces:
- Asters
- Aruncus (Goat’s Beard or Bride’s Feathers)
- Astilbe (False Goat’s Beard)
- Baptisia (False Indigo)
- Bee balm
- Catmint
- Coreopsis (Tickseed)
- Echinacea purpura (Eastern Purple Coneflower)
- Fothergilla
- Heuchera.
While the above are mostly native perennials, we also have native shrubs and trees at Tomlinson Bomberger.
When you work with one of our landscape designers, they’ll take you through the following landscape design and installation process:
- It all starts at the discovery meeting. After contacting us, you’ll meet with a specific team member with expertise in landscaping projects.
- One of our landscape experts will walk with you through your property and discuss your needs and dreams.
- You’ll have a planning and presentation meeting where you receive your custom proposal, detailing the plant and other materials needed for your project. You’ll also see a 3D color rendering of your design.
- Our team will create your outdoor living space, including hardscaping and landscape installation.
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Need help or have questions? Our customer care team is just a click away.
Sources:
Drought.gov/states/Pennsylvania.
GardenDesign.com, 20 Drought-Tolerant Plants for a Beautiful Landscape.
Ibid., 2025 Trends in Garden Design.
Ibid. Ideas for an Enticing Cottage Garden.
GardenMedia.com, 2025 Garden Trends Report—Nature’s Renaissance.
SouthernLiving.com, 7 Garden Trends You’ll See Everywhere in 2025.
