Landscaping & Hardscaping 2024 Trends | Interview with Tanya Olsen

Tanya Olsen, a landscape designer, discusses landscape and hardscape trends for 2024. If you’re a DIYer or need professional landscape architects or landscape designers, Tanya always has some great takeaways.

About Tanya Olsen:
Tanya is a third-generation garden centre owner and landscape designer.
Teaches Horticulture Apprenticeship at Humber College in Ontario, Canada.
Has a weekly segment on CTV news.
Has a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture.
YWCA Woman of Distinction.

About Royal City Nursery:
Guelph, Ontario’s only third-generation, full-service garden centre! We specialize in creating custom outdoor living spaces and unique solutions for all your garden, landscape, and seasonal decorating needs! At our new greenhouse, located between Guelph and Cambridge, we are the garden centre of choice for discerning homeowners, landscapers, and designers. royalcitynursery.com

hey everyone it’s Tanya from Royal City Nursery and today we are chatting about landscape planning this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart because for those of you who may not know I actually did a bachelor of landscape architecture at the University of golf so I I graduated from there um a lot more moons ago than we generally tend to think about um but one of the things I really like about about landscape planning and landscape design more importantly is that you get the opportunity to really think about a space and how you want to feel within a space and to me if you’re planning the outdoors your Outdoors should be an extension of your indoor space as well so when we start to think landscape planning or landscape design outside we actually want to take those cues from your indoor spaces first so think about your patio doors think about your entrance spaces think about your exit um what rooms are you coming out of or conversely what rooms are you coming into so if we’re thinking about landscape design for your front uh for the front yard then typically we generally tend to think about that as an entrance space right the first entrance to your home is absolutely the door that you physically walk through into the hallway but realistically from an exterior perspective your first entrance is actually the driveway so think about your driveway space how does that feel is that welcoming is it the colors you want does it reflect the personality you have and then your next entrance space in the front yard is going to be in uh it’s basically going to be at the front walkway right so where the driveway meets the walkway itself You’ got that little corner and you want a little bit of of pop and Pizzazz because each one of these entrance spaces needs to say hello hello hello I’m an entrance and it’s a lot easier to do that so way way easier to think about again your front yard as an experience into your home when we’re thinking about design for your backyard you need to think about that as an extension of your rooms from indoors so if you’re coming out from your family room or from your living room or even your kitchen and dining room you’re coming out from a space that you typically entertain in so to come into a space where again you’re entertaining so you might come on to a deck or a patio um and you might come into that outdoor kitchen space right you want to keep your outdoor kitchen fairly close to your indoor kitchen so then at least if you’re carrying platters of stuff and you’re you’re carrying things back and forth you don’t have to go through the entire house and the entire yard to do that but more than that it’s not just about having your exterior space be right against your house right so we go out of the house into an entertaining space and now we need some um some features that are a little bit further away uh into the yard so actually makes you want to get to the yard and that’s the part where landscape design gets much more fun and much more unique too Tanya what about Trends what trends are you seeing because I know obviously there’s a landscaping business here as well as part of the garden center and the boutique what what sort of Trends are you seeing this year that people are asking for and um you know and then in like sort of the greater areas of of town what are you seeing so absolutely we we have landscape designers on staff there’s actually three of us um my husband and myself we we met at un University of WF and then we also have Jessica with us and Jessica is our landscape architect uh so she can help and she works with a Phenomenal Woman by the name of Kate and between the two of them they can take care of just about anything that you need um when we think about trends one of there’s a few big ones right now we’re seeing a lot of interest in cutting Gardens so Gardens that are suitable or have flowers that you would be able to cut and bring indoors so things like your tulips and daffodil but even look at what can you cut throughout the season certainly attracting beneficial insects and pollinators is not just a trend but I think it’s a way of gardening that is here to stay so we want to increase the population absolutely we also want to make that a much more habitable space for our pollinators and our beneficial insects so we want to look at things like do they have a water source do they have a habitat right so we want to not just incorporate food sources we want to incorporate sources that will make them feel a lot more comfortable and keep them around the other big big Trend we’re seeing and it’s something we’ve advocated for a long long time is the incorporation of Edibles into your landscape so when we’re thinking about vegetables to me a vegetable garden shouldn’t be the rectangular plot that’s at the back of the yard cuz quite frankly that’s boring um get your vegetables up close and personal use your tomatoes and your peppers as your Thrillers in your pods um use things like blueberries blueberries are beautiful beautiful plant and they actually give you blueberries which is awesome but with the blueberry bush you get white flowers in May you get berries absolutely in June or July depending on variety and then they turn a beautiful burgundy to Red in the fall so it can actually replace a lot of your burning bush or a lot of other ornamental plants um and incorporating Edibles into the landscape to me is a big big deal right we’re we’re looking at something where we have the ability to say I did it myself so things like including um fruit trees as your ornamental trees then um also including some of the other non-traditional fruits so things like cervice berries or amanka are beautiful native shrub that get 15 to 20 ft in height um and again you get two or three different seasons of flour from them so incorporating all of those into your spaces becomes a lifestyle not not just a trend we want to take your garden away from a trend as crazy as it sounds because it’s a lot easier to maintain something that your personality is absolutely overflowing and and the more we can take those Trends and get them incorporated into your lifestyle the more effective your landscape design is going to be in the long one and just a a quick little question Tanya um for people’s balconies you know what are you what are you seeing for trends for that right now honestly the trends for balconies and even trends for indoor spaces exactly the same as outdoor spaces um the only difference is on a balcony or in a townhouse our Gardens are a little bit smaller right so it just becomes a a matter of scale so for things like Planters um again incor get some really cool Tomatoes maybe it’s an heirloom tomato one of the the chocolate brown ones or one of the purple ones so it gives you a slightly different color and corporate some basil use a purple variety use a variegated variety of Basil um and get those growing into your pots using some edible flowers like mys and that that’s a really neat way of taking that Trend and that idea to a space that’s a little bit smaller so you don’t necessarily need to have a big Garden to still be able to grow your own food and then just lastly I know there’s been a lot of questions in the store about hardscaping spaces and just wondered if you know if your team um is available to do hardscaping or anything like we love doing hard Scapes and that’s something most people don’t know about us we honestly would like to be involved really from the Geo so to be able to help you not just plan uh but install your patios your decks your water features um hardscaping to me also includes pots and trellises and you can actually include some furniture too so heartscape to me is anything that is not a plant and that’s the part that makes your your space feel a lot more like you because it it helps Define the spaces doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to be an interlock patio maybe it does and that’s cool but maybe it’s malt your gravel and we looked at some alternative options too that’s great thank you very much for taking the time Tanya hope to uh chat with you next week thank you