From container-grown boxwoods to wildflowers, Southern gardeners are leaning into trends that balance beauty and practicality while focusing more on native plants. Outdoor spaces and gardening aren’t just about decor—your facade and curb appeal are the first thing to welcome people into your home and are a reflection of how you live and gather. As gardening continues to flourish across the region, experts say 2026 will bring even more focus on outdoor living spaces, container plants, edible landscapes, and low-maintenance plantings. Here are 7 trends to expect in the garden next year, according to the experts.
Adam Millhouse is the co-founder of Millhouse Howell Landscape Company, a Birmingham, Alabama, landscape design company with a mission to craft spaces that complement their surrounding landscape
Katie Tamony is the chief marketing officer and trend spotter for Monrovia Nursery, the nation’s largest grower of premium shrubs, trees, and perennials.
The Southern Living Plant Collection is a curated selection of plants developed in partnership with expert growers, designed to thrive in Southern climates and bring year-round beauty, color, and ease to home landscapes
Edible Plants
In true Southern fashion, food and gardening go hand in hand. According to Monrovia’s research, adding more edible plants is a high priority among home gardeners. “When times are tough, people gravitate toward growing their own food, but this trend goes beyond that phenomenon,” says Tamony. “The expansion we’re seeing in the edibles trend shows home gardeners are getting more adventurous and more world-aware in their selections. Drawing on their interest in cooking and travel, higher-income gardeners are looking for unique and sophisticated edibles to add to their landscape.”
This trend towards mixing ornamental appeal with food in the garden goes beyond the typical herbs and vegetables found in raised kitchen beds—there’s a growing interest in microgreens, edible flowers, and citrus and fruit trees like figs, persimmons, apples, berries.
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Courtesy of Millhouse Howell Landscape Company
Thoughtful Borders
We’re not talking overly-manicured spaces, but rather helping create structure. “Small spaces feel bigger when they are-well defined,” explains Adam Millhouse. “Details like stone borders help to delineate lawn and planting areas, keeping edges straight and crisp.” There’s still room for ‘modern meadows’ where more naturalistic, wild designs meet refined borders and simplicity—providing a little distinction helps each area of your garden feel more intentional.
Collected Cultivars
Whether it’s from your grandparents’ garden, the local garden shop, or plucked from nature, purpose-driven gardening and bringing back heirloom plants is more popular than ever. According to a 2026 garden trends report from Southern Living Plant Collection, “people are planting not just for beauty, but for meaning.” The report notes homeowners are gardening more intentionally—collecting rare cultivars, new foliage colors, and variegations with sustainability in mind for lasting beauty.
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Hector Manuel Sanchez
Enhanced Outdoor Living Spaces
A love for porches and patios and using them as an extension of the living room is nothing new to Southerners, but according to a consumer research report by Monrovia, there’s an uptick in “patio culture”. Gardeners are softening hardscapes and filling containers with ferns, broad-leafed evergreens, and fragrant climbers like jasmine and mandevilla and incorporating more colorful and fragrant plants.
“There is more interest than ever in gardening on decks and patios,” says Katie Tamony. “We’re seeing the biggest increase in container gardening interest with gardeners 65 years old, but this is a trend that reaches every demographic, especially gardeners who want elegant outdoor spaces that are low maintenance. They are creating whole gardens on their patios with beautiful containers.”
For a landscape that will best suit the changing seasons, Millhouse recommends: “Keep planting pallets simple and use garden containers with seasonal plantings to punctuate an entrance and serve as a focal point.”
Purposeful Evergreens
While we love vibrant and colorful annuals that brighten up a facade, filling your landscape with evergreens in varying textures, shapes, colors, and sizes can add equal and longer-lasting interest to your yard. “Year-round blooms are fun, but equally as interesting are [plantings in] shades of green with various leaf-textures,” says Millhouse. This is becoming a more common practice for easy maintenance, especially when it comes to in-ground plantings.
Credit:
Courtesy of Millhouse Howell Landscape Company
Easy-To-Maintain Plantings
Gardners are looking for plants that easily add a little sophistication and structure, but are still low-maintenance. This includes potted and in-the-ground plantings. “Boxwoods in containers never go out of style,” notes Millhouse. Monrovia experts highlight an increased interest in evergreen hedges like holly and boxwood, ferns; climbers such as roses, jasmine, and camellias for color; and flowering shrubs and perennials including hydrangeas and lavender.
Micro Gardens
While the South’s love for container gardens is nothing new, the Southern Living Plant Collection says homeowners are diving even further into small-space gardening as “we’re living in an age of compression.” The report notes: “Everything is distilled into smaller, smarter, and more intentional formats, from communication to content to consumer products.” We’re seeing this translate to green spaces as Southern gardeners are embracing a more curated, compact, and intentionally planted mindset that delivers a big visual impact. The SLCP suggests “a ‘flight’ of camellias in a range of bloom hues” to bring charm to any front porch or patio, a concept that can be carried out with any floral variety.
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