Sunday Garden Trend Emphasizes Low-Maintenance Spaces
The biggest gardening trend for 2026 is the "Sunday Garden" - a low-maintenance, sanctuary-style outdoor space building on the green drenching movement. This approach prioritizes ease, relaxation, and extending home comfort into gardens, while UK gardeners are being asked not to mow lawns for the rest of February to help birds survive winter.
- The "Sunday Garden" concept, identified as a key 2026 trend by plant brand Monrovia, focuses on creating a polished, structured look that feels both luxurious and lived-in without requiring constant upkeep. It is meant to evoke the calm, effortless feeling of a slow Sunday morning, moving away from wilder, more naturalistic planting styles. - A core principle of this trend is a disciplined and restrained color palette, often centered around soft whites, blush tones, and gentle pastels to create a cohesive and serene atmosphere. Key structural plants include evergreens like boxwood and holly, layered with perennials such as hydrangeas and lavender for a touch of romance. - The "green drenching" movement, which provides the foundation for the Sunday Garden, is inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, or "forest bathing." It emphasizes layering multiple shades and textures of green foliage to create a calming, immersive, and monochromatic landscape. - By not mowing in February, longer grass provides shelter for insects and preserves seeds, which are vital food sources for ground-feeding birds like robins, blackbirds, and finches when berries are scarce and the ground is frozen. - The "no mow" request is part of a larger conservation effort, as the UK's 24 million gardens constitute a larger land area than all of the nation's nature reserves combined. - Allowing grass and wildflowers to grow provides essential food for declining pollinator populations and creates a habitat for insects and small mammals, which in turn supports predators higher up the food chain like owls and sparrowhawks. - Proponents of low-maintenance design suggest that for small gardens, replacing a lawn entirely with large planted borders and permeable paving or gravel can actually be less work than maintaining a small patch of grass. - To achieve the low-maintenance goal, the Sunday Garden approach prioritizes plants that mature gracefully and don't need frequent pruning, as well as using large containers, which dry out more slowly than smaller pots.
