Proven 2025 Garden Trends: Create Stunning Medicinal & Ecological Gardens! | Ashley Elenbaas

In this episode, I’m sharing the top gardening trends for 2025—and why they matter not only for our gardens, but for our hearts, our communities, and our planet. As a clinical herbalist and lifelong gardener, I love looking at how nature-based practices evolve to meet the needs of the moment.

This year’s trends speak to a deeper desire for sustainable gardening, mental health support, and meaningful community engagement. From mini meadows to vertical gardening, from soil health to repurposed materials, I’ll guide you through each of these powerful approaches—and how you can start using them today.

Whether you have a full yard or just a few containers, these ideas can bring more life, beauty, and connection to your space.

Here’s what we’ll explore together:
– Mini Meadows – A low-maintenance way to support pollinators and rewild your spaces
– Companion Planting & Ecosystem Gardening – Let your plants care for each other
– Soil Health – The foundation for a thriving, nutrient-rich garden
– Repurposed Materials – Reduce waste while creating something beautiful
– Smart Water Use – Save water with simple, effective conservation methods
– Community Gardens – Growing herbs and vegetables together builds belonging
– Wildlife-Friendly Gardens – Invite birds, bees, and butterflies back in
– Vertical Gardening – Make the most of small spaces, especially in urban areas
– Gardens for Mental Health – Use gardening as a therapeutic, grounding practice

Resources:

Soil to Spirit Playlist with Ashley Elenbaas – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtGmbdK5tigdaoI6mlsJdkzFSiJxrt7Am&feature=shared

Making Compost Tea – https://learn.eartheasy.com/articles/the-best-compost-tea-recipe-to-help-your-plants-thrive/

Book – “God’s Hotel” by Victoria Sweet – https://amzn.to/40LTthw

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Chapters – Proven 2025 Garden Trends: Create Stunning Medicinal & Ecological Gardens!
00:00 Begins
00:34 Introduction to 2025 Gardening Trends
01:44 Embracing Mini Meadows
03:22 The Power of Companion Planting
05:58 Soil Health: The Foundation of Gardening
08:06 Repurposing for Sustainable Gardening
09:06 Smart Water Use in Gardening
10:44 Building Community Through Gardening
11:44 Utilizing Vertical Space for Urban Gardening
13:21 Gardening for Mental Health

Proven 2025 Garden Trends: Create Stunning Medicinal & Ecological Gardens!

#GardeningTrends #MiniMeadows #CompanionPlanting #SoilHealth #SustainableGardening #CommunityGardens #VerticalGardening #MentalHealth #WaterConservation #EcoFriendlyGardening #SkyHouseHerbs

Hi friends, welcome to Sky House Herbs podcast. I’m Ashley Ellenbos, a clinical herbalist and in this space I share my knowledge and experience with plant medicine to help you on your own journey of healing and transformation. Join me in exploring the ancient wisdom of plant spirit medicine and how it can be used to heal the body, mind, and spirit. We’ll talk to experts in the field and share stories from people who have been transformed by powerful plant allies. New episodes are released each Monday, so please subscribe. And now, let’s explore this mystical world of plant medicine together. Hey everyone, welcome in. Today, I’ll be sharing with you the 2025 trends in gardening. These aren’t just trends like clothing, fashion trends, but these are important because they capture the spirit what I think so many of us are interested in. preserving biological diversity, being respectful of water, and taking care of the land we are stewarding. I hope you find this episode to be helpful in how you garden. Doing this in a way that is not only good for your land and beautiful, of course, but also in a way that is nurturing your soul and nurturing your own deep inner life. Because when we are out there gardening, we are connecting with something bigger. Before we dive into today’s content, if you haven’t yet subscribed to my channel, please take a moment, click the subscribe button, click on notifications so you can learn about new upcoming videos that are posted every week. If you like today’s video, I have a whole playlist called from soil to spirit where you can learn about the intersection between gardening, herbalism, and spirituality. All right, let’s dive in. 25 trend number one is the mini meadow. So, what is a mini meadow and why is it so important? Why is everyone wanting to capture the spirit of a mini meadow? I’ll tell you why. Because it is lowmaintenance and this is so nice and so good not only for ourselves and our own mental health, but it’s also really good for the planet. A mini meadow is a piece of land that you can reclaim by filling it with pollinators and local plants. This is really nice because many of our meadow plants are also medicinal. For example, beeb balm or minard fistillosa is a wonderful meadow plant that is beloved by pollinators and is a wonderful remedy for the nervous system for nerve damage, for coughs and mucus in the chest and lungs. It has I mean honestly it has over a hundred really good uses. That’s just one. And you can plant that alongside an herb like yarao. Yarao is a very ancient medicine and yarao can be used for wounds, for bleeding. It can be used for venus constriction. It’s a great fever medicine. And why don’t we even just add in another beautiful meadow flower, echgonatia. Echanatia is a wonderful immune stimulant and it’s a great pollinator. Consider if you have a piece of land or somewhere in your yard is just maybe an old garden bed, repurposing it and making it into a little mini meadow and look up what are the plants that would grow in a meadow where you live and then just fill it up and then let it go. The second gardening trend that we’re seeing pop up is diversity and companion planting. Now, I did recently do a video on the power of companion planting and I gave you a bunch of herbs that you can plant together. This is something that is gaining a lot of interest and I think one of the most highly searched gardening topics is companion planting because we know that when we plant the right things together, they do better and they also sustain themselves longer. For example, if we plant herbs or any plant really that h has the same soil needs, the same sun needs and the same water needs, then it is going to thrive and do well. Another interesting thing about companion planting is that it can also make the plants grow healthier and stronger. And this can be due to the way that they communicate underground through their microisal network. It can also be because of the way they communicate above ground through pherommones and different scents that they emit. One study showed that planting basil and thyme together increases the amount of volatile oils in the plants which improves their taste and their quality. We can also plant herbs together that will create more of a cohesive wildlife environment. So if we think about kind of like the meadow garden of creating a whole area that is very self- sustaining, this is ideal. People are becoming more and more interested in becoming ecosystem stewards rather than just gardeners, rather than just making a place that is very manicured and requires a lot of work. They’re interested in creating sustainable habitats. And when we use companion planting methods, we do that. We basically are being very attentive to what works well in nature and we are replicating that. Another thing about ecosystem gardening that I have been doing is rather than trying to create an organized pattern of plants is by clumping them together. For example, planting a bunch of echgonatia together, planting a bunch of feverfew together, planting a big swath of ferns together if you have a shady area is also a nice way of creating a more natural cohesive environment. And then you allow those plants to also mingle with their neighbors. And they’re basically like sisters and brothers. They’re, you know, they’re related. They’re the same plant. So, if you plant larger groupings of the same plant, they’ll actually do better and create these nice ecosystems that are good above and below ground. Trend number three that gardeners are hopping on is the importance of soil health. Think about the health of the soil says everything about the garden and the gardener because soil health requires care and attention. If our plants are not doing well above ground, it is most likely due to what is happening below ground. And isn’t that true for ourselves, too? Right? We start to have these symptoms pop up. A skin thing here, a headache there, and often that’s because our bodies are giving us a signal that something inside isn’t quite right. And so, if we can pay attention to our gardens and our garden spaces and really say, is my soil happy? Does it have irration? Are there earthworms in my soil? Constantly churning it and making sure that there is irration happening. Does my soil have food? And we can do that quite easily now through soil amendments. We can use manure. We can use compost. We can use worm casting casings. We can use pretty much there’s so many different biodnamic and natural ways of supporting our soil. I will include some links below of just some simple recipes you can use to create your own compost tea to support the health of your soil. The fourth trend is repurposing items for gardening use. This can be as simple as instead of buying 2x4s for making raised beds, instead using logs that have fallen on your property and using those to create those raised beds. We can also use old window shutters as a trellis. We can repurpose a wheelbarrow in the garden as a planter bed. I’ve even seen some friends recently buying old bathtubs and making outdoor bathtub showers for themselves. And also then using that water, draining it, and using that to garden and water their plants. We can have so many different ways of repurposing things that we might throw away and that might end up in the landfill and using those to beautify our property and also using them to help the plants grow. Trend number five is smart water use. I think we’re all trying to be more water savvy and I remember I lived in Australia for a year and I would brush my teeth and leave the water running and I remember one of my roommates being like, “Ash, why why do you have the faucet running?” And I was like, I don’t know why. She’s like, you you don’t do that. Just, you know, if you’re not using the water, turn it off. And you know, this was down in Melbourne or Melbourne. And you know, they grew up knowing the importance of water conservation. So, it was kind of like a an unsaid rule that you turn the water off if you’re not using it. You fill your sink with water when you’re washing dishes. You don’t ever just let the water run. And it it was such a simple thing that has stayed with me, you know, since I was gosh, I guess 20 at the time that I always turn the water off when I brush my teeth. It’s so simple, but it’s an easy way to conserve water. In our gardens, we can be similarly smart. Did you know that by adding drip lines to your raised beds or to your gardens, you can reduce water use by almost 50%. That’s huge. I know it’s an investment to add drip lines, but when you actually look at the long-term conservation benefits and also the money that you’ll save from using water, it really does pay off. Consider investing in drip lines and in timers for your watering system. You may also want to consider mulching areas that get really dried out. That will keep the moisture retained in the soil and help those beds from drying out. Whenever possible, use undyed mulch. Another great thing you can do to conserve water and to be a steward of water is to create little rain oasises or oasis oasises oasises or little rain garden. And this is a place where the rain that when it falls it will collect in an area and then you can grow water loving plants. For example, blue vervane loves to grow along a water’s edge. This is a wonderful medicine for tension, lock jaw, and and TMJ. It’s a really good one for stiff necks. I just I swear by blue vervane for neck pain. You can grow your own blue vervane on the edge of your water pond. You can also grow things like calamus and milkweed, which is great for pollinators and for caterpillars. And there’s a ton of other plants that you can grow. It also creates a little space for frogs and amphibians to live, which is really a nice way to give them a little bit of a safe haven as they’re passing through. Number six on the list of garden trends is community gardens. I love this one because guess what? I’m doing it. I am such a trend follower. You can do this, too. You can create a community garden. And this can be as simple as a garden in a shared area. I remember my friends in Washington DC. They had a community garden that they were a part of and they’d go there on the weekends and they’d grow their zucchini and their strawberries and then they’d talk with people in their community and then they would share, oh, I’ve got 10 zucchinis. Do you want three and I’ll take some of your tomatoes? And it was a wonderful way for them to not only really feel good about how they were getting their food, but also to create that idea of cohesive community. And here in Minnesota, I have garden gatherings once a month where people come from the local community and we sit out in the garden. We talk about medicinal herbs. We make art. We do a little bit of movement sometimes and it’s just a lovely way to bring people together in nature. And you can do that, too. Number seven is vertical gardens. If you live in an urban area, if you live in the city, if you only have a patio or balcony, you can utilize the vertical space that you have to grow medicinal plants and herbs. One that I love to grow is passion flour. Passion flour can be grown in a pot that you take in in the winter and bring out in the spring. When you bring it in, just cut off the dead plant material about 6 in. and then bring that whole pot inside and water it periodically to make sure that the roots don’t die. It’ll stay green. It’ll grow a little bit, but then in the spring when it really starts to take off, you can take it outside, bring it back to that trellis, and let it grow. Studies have shown that when you’re looking out the window, when you see green, it elevates your mood and it increases productivity and concentration. So, if you’re living in the city and you’ve got a deck, try to use that vertical space. Grow your own tomatoes. Grow your own passion flour, which is a wonderful nerve and sleep remedy. And it makes passion fruit, which are tasty little delicious like bite-siz fruits. You can utilize that space and also create a beautiful green screen that will help you feel really good. And the last trend of 2025 in gardening is gardening for mental health. Let’s face it, we are living in really crazy times. Things are stressful. And you know, if you’re anything like me, especially with the astrology going on, like there are some big ups and downs happening. And for me, my garden is my sanctuary. And a lot of people are taking to gardening. And they actually started taking to gardening during the pandemic when they didn’t, you know, when everything was closed and there was fear of food scarcity. However, that trend has continued and more and more people are hopping on the bandwagon of gardening for their own well-being and their own mental health. And studies do show that if you are gardening, you are touching this very specific type of bacteria. And I wrote down the name because I always like I always butcher it. Mcoacterium vac vax or these are a very specific type of bacteria that when you put your hands in the soil and they absorb through your skin and you inhale this bacteria it actually increases feelings of well-being. It decreases anxiety and stress and tension in the body which is great. So you can get outside and care for your mental health by tending the soil and garden. Another study showed if a hospital room had a garden outside the window, the length of stay by those people or patients was greatly decreased. People actually ended up getting out of the hospital sooner if they had a view of a garden from their window. That made me think about this book that I mentioned in my last episode of 10 herb books you must read over the summer. this book called God’s Hotel, which very much utilized this idea of green spaces, having plants inside of patient rooms, and utilizing the power of plants for healing and recovery, especially from chronic illnesses. This is a great book. It’s a story. It’s a story of a woman doctor and her experience at this alms house in I think it was Santa Barbara, California. Great summer read. So, please pick that up. She also in this book follows the work of Hildigar Debenan and I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. I feel like probably a lot of you have heard of her. She was an incredible Christian mystic who sang songs to plants and she was a very magical mystical woman. A lot of the teachings of Hildigard are in this book and were utilized by this doctor in her residency. So so many reasons why you should read that book. But that was the last one is number eight is gardens for mental health. So that is what we have today. I hope you found that to be helpful. Maybe it started getting you thinking about your own garden and ways that you can maybe revision and reuse spaces you have. Maybe even moving some of your beds to clump plants together to make them grow more fully. or even thinking about how you can capture water and rain in your natural environment and use it to create a water garden or creating rain barrels from which you can then water your plants during the drier months of summer. I would love to hear which trend you are most excited by. I know for me personally, the idea of tending the garden for mental health has been a huge one. And especially the daily rhythm that is so important for me is waking up and tending the plants, being outside, hearing the birds, seeing the bees, you know, starting my day every day with some time in the garden. And tell me if that’s something that you think you might benefit from as well. So, thank you for watching. Thank you for subscribing. And maybe I’ll see you here in the garden for our next garden gathering at the end of July in August and September. So check out my website skyhouse.com. Click on events and then you’ll see our garden gatherings where you can come and hang out in my garden with me and our local community. So thank you all so much. Have a great day and I’ll see you in the next episode. [Music]