They say that everything comes back into fashion eventually, from clothes to interiors, and the world of gardening is no exception. Certain plants and features that we swore off incorporating into our gardens forever are now firmly back in vogue. But not as we knew them previously – designers are now using them in new and interesting ways. Here are six old-fashioned or previously known as naff garden features that are making a comeback.
Island beds
Island beds were pioneered by the late plantsman Alan Bloom 75 years ago at his home, Bressingham Gardens in Norfolk, and have had a huge influence on gardens and planting design ever since. At least one island bed graced many a garden, neatly edged, with not one plant spilling over the edge, and surrounded by an immaculately trimmed lawn.
“Alan Bloom’s rationale started from the basis of plant health and robustness,” explains designer Charlotte Harris. “He observed that if planted in open conditions rather than next to the immediate shelter of hedges or fences, plants grew stronger and stockier, with airiness also promoting plant health. This insight had a profound influence and prompted him in the 1950s to develop the famous Dell Garden, with 50 curvilinear island beds of 5,000 species and cultivars that could be appreciated from all sides.”
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In 1968, Alan also designed the island beds at the famous Waterperry garden in Oxfordshire, which can still be enjoyed today. “I am utterly convinced that the island beds are by far the best means of growing the widest range of good subjects,” he wrote in his 1977 book, Perennials in Island Beds.
While we don’t all have room for 50 large island beds, Bloom’s principles can be applied in any setting. “The fluid shapes break up the monotony of lawns or hardscapes, making the garden feel more relaxed,” says Charlotte Harris. “Curved paths invite exploration – what lies around the corner? A key element of good garden design is that everything is not immediately visible, sparking curiosity and intrigue.”
At RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford, Tom Stuart-Smith has designed the arrival section of the gardens with a modern take on the island bed, creating a flowing and intuitive experience for visitors. Their organic shapes are likened by Tom to the patterns on a giraffe’s skin.
Charlotte points out that island beds in a garden don’t require a rigid design plan; the garden can evolve naturally, bed by bed, over time, making it an excellent option if you’re working within time or budget constraints. In larger, rural gardens the organic, irregular forms create a flowing, intuitive design that complement the surrounding landscape.
“Scale is critical,” advises Charlotte. “Beds should also be proportionate to one another; without a clear sense of relative size, they can feel fragmented and disassociated. And scale applies to planting also. The size of a bed and the height of plants must relate to one another and to the overall space. A small bed filled with only tall plants will feel top-heavy, while one with only low plants can feel flat and one-dimensional. Remember, beds like these are designed to be viewed from all sides, meaning they must be carefully planned to ensure that they hold interest from any angle – including from vantage points above.”
Charlotte and her team ensure that there are slight mounds on all of their beds, rather than them being dead flat. “Anything from 100mm to 300mm will make the difference, especially in a setting where the plot is flat. A gently convex ‘back of a spoon’ profile to the bed means that you help your planting with a bit of extra oomph, enhance the visual impact and help with drainage.”
Conifers
For many, the word 'conifer’ conjures an image of a large tree or towering hedge – probably chosen by an unsuspecting gardener years ago as it was fast-growing and evergreen. Or it may bring to mind a collection of conifers growing together in a lumpy island bed.
However, slower growing, small and dwarf conifers are finding their place in modern gardens and a new generation of gardeners are appreciating their many positive qualities. They are evergreen, easy to clip and can provide useful structure, especially in winter. Many can even be grown in containers.
“Small conifers can form attractive shapes, including cushions and mounds, or become small, manageable small trees,” says Matthew Pottage, Head of Horticulture at the Royal Parks. “Some have colourful foliage or foliage that changes colour in winter. Miniature cones and attractive bark add to their appeal. In winter, many conifers are a wonderful foil for winter-flowering plants, plants with winter seedheads, or the buff-gold of dormant ornamental grasses. Shade-loving conifers work well with ferns, epimediums and other woodland shade plants.”
Conifers are also now proving a useful alternative to box, which has been plagued by pest and disease issues in recent years, including box blight and box tree caterpillar.
“There’s been a sharp focus on small-leaved evergreen conifers, including pines, spruce, Podocarpus, cypress (Cryptomeria) and Chamaecyparis,” says Matthew. “Mountain pines, Pinus mugo, have been used to great effect as evergreen mounds by designers Chris Beardshaw and Matt Keightley at the RHS Flower Show in recent years. Podocarpus is probably my No. 1 box alternative. It can take close clipping, doesn’t grow too fast and, usefully, regenerates from old wood.”
Shrubs
The shrubbery – a part of the garden exclusively filled with shrubs – had fallen out of favour in recent times, not least because the New Perennial movement, pioneered in the 1990s by the likes of Piet Oudolf, focused very much on flowering herbaceous perennials and ornamental grasses. Shrubs were left out in the cold – until recently.
Garden designers are now beginning turning their attention back to shrubs, and in 2024, a landmark book, Shrouded in Ligh: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Shrublands, was published. Noel Kingsbury, who wrote the seminal The New Perennial Garden in 1996 and a key player in the New Perennial movement, reviewed it for Gardens Illustrated and declared it a ‘clarion call’ for incorporating more shrubs into our gardens.
This time, shrubs are not part of a shrubbery but a key component of a planting scheme. Ecological designer Nigel Dunnett is increasingly turning to shrubs in his own naturalistic planting to introduce structure and biodiversity. “There is a certain irony to that,” he says. “I have long been associated with the perennial movement, which began as a reaction against the old idea of a shrubbery as a boring monoculture of blobby shapes, but I think we have moved beyond those hard distinctions and should embrace all the available options.”
In his landmark scheme at the Barbican in London, Nigel has used a wide range of shrubs, including Philadelphus, Sorbus, roses and Amelanchier, chosen with an eye not only to their structure, but also for their seasonal interest. “Using shrubs in our Shrub Steppe planting at the Barbican added visually interesting structure, flowers, fruit and autumn colour, but also introduced additional bird habitats that increased the overall wildlife value of the scheme,” he says.
The modern way to grow shrubs is as a multi-stem, with a raised canopy - which adds structure and interest to a garden year-round and allows for planting underneath. “Trees have to be manipulated into multi-stemmed forms, but that is the natural habit of a shrub, which makes it more predictable and manageable,” says Nigel Dunnett. They’re also a much cheaper and readily available option, as multi-stem trees are very expensive and difficult for home gardeners to get their hands on.
Award-winning designer Sarah Price uses multi-stemmed shrubs to build layers of successional interest: “Shrubs can be a valuable part of the overall composition,” she says. Her show-stopping Nurture Landscapes Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2023 included an airy multi-stemmed Elaeagnus ‘Quicksilver’ together with Rosa glauca, its whippy stems arching down from a high crown. “Even a buddleja can develop a tree-like character if you prune it right,” she says.
Landscape architect Stefano Marinaz says that the most important consideration when choosing a shrub is to choose those that won’t constantly reshoot from the base.
“Things like Viburnum, Hamamelis and Osmanthus become woody quite quickly, giving a sense of age and character to the stems and making maintenance easier,” he says. He also recommends Hydrangea aspera Villosa Group, which has the bonus of interesting bark that peels attractively as the plant ages. “And once you lift the canopy you get a beautiful opportunity to plant underneath, maybe with something like a shady-tolerant grass or Heuchera, which can look very pleasing.”
Mat Reese, head gardener at Malverleys in Hampshire, points out that many shrubs have wonderful flowers. “Magnolia liliiflora ‘Nigra’ produces masses of gorgeous tulip-shaped flowers from spring to summer. Others, including Osmanthus delavayi have bark that develops an aged character relatively quickly. And many, such as Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’, will produce attractive fruit as well.”
Rockeries
Rockeries and rock gardens came into fashion in the 19th century and were popular for decades – the first Gold medal for a garden at the inaugural Chelsea Flower Show in 1913 went to a rocky scene that might ‘easily be imagined to be a bit of the Yorkshire Fells bodily transported South’. Until recently, many gardens had a smaller-scale rockery, filled with miniature conifers, heathers, and low growing, ground cover plants. These may now be a thing of the past, but there is renewed interest in rock gardens – there have been large-scale restoration projects at several historic gardens, including Chatsworth – as well as their contemporary cousin, the crevice garden.
“Crevice gardens are characterised by their careful arrangement of thin, upright slices of stone, set closely together but with enough space between them to create planting pockets,” explains designer Charlotte Harris. “This layout echoes the dynamism of natural rock formations. Larger pieces form the backbone and create rhythm and structure; smaller pieces are used to stabilise and give a sense of naturalistic balance, and are set with gaps for planting.”
Charlotte points out that crevice gardens can be scaled to fit any space, and can make the most of reclaimed (and ideally local) materials such as roofing tiles or broken concrete or stone, combining sustainability with creativity.
Rock and crevice gardens are best planted up with alpines, in which there is also a renewed interest – the British Red Cross: Here for Humanity garden at the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show featured alpine plants from around the world. “I’m thinking of younger generation who have much smaller gardens,” said its designer, John Warland. “They might have a one-bedroom flat in an urban location and are getting into houseplants. An alpine display in a window box or trough could be a natural next step.”
Elea Strang of Kevock Garden plants, which specialises in alpines, agrees. “The fact that they are adaptable and suitable for gardening on a small scale from pots and troughs to window boxes or crevice gardens, in sun or shade, makes them ideal for the modern garden.”
Pampas grass
Pampas grass, Cortaderia selloana, used to be a common sight in front gardens, but fell out of favour - largely thanks to the urban myth that a pampas signalled that the homeowners were, ahem, open to meeting other couples (swingers). In 2011, the presenter Mariella Frostrup planted two pampas grasses on a balcony in London, and tweeted that she was shocked by the local response.
Nowadays you might be happy to leave the plant be, as pampas grass is firmly back in fashion - or, at least, its feathery plumes are. The hashtag #pampasgrass currently has 748,000 posts on Instagram, the vast majority featuring dried pampas grass. The dried flower heads are popular in modern interiors and are in demand for boho-style wedding bouquets, floral decorations, flower arches and Christmas wreaths. It appears that we have forgotten or no longer care about pampas' dodgy associations – or that the younger generation don’t know about them.
There are some good reasons why you should add a pampas grass to your own garden. Like other ornamental grasses, pampas will add texture and movement to a planting scheme. They are best grown within borders, with other grasses and late-season perennials, as opposed to in the middle of a lawn or isolated in a front garden as they were in the past.
Newer, more compact varieties of Cortaderia selloana such as Cortaderia selloana Tiny Pampa are now available, making them perfect for pots or small gardens. The Austraderia types, such as Austraderia fulvida, hail from New Zealand and have more elegant and arching foliage than their clumpier counterparts. And there are even pink pampas grasses available, which are surely the next big thing.
Crazy paving
“I love crazy paving,” says designer Charlotte Harris. “I don’t mean the psychedelic colours of 1970s driveways. Done well, using irregular paving slabs, crazy paving is full of character and design potential. It adapts easily to awkward shapes and curving paths without the need for fussy cuts, and its irregularity brings visual richness.”
The trick to laying contemporary crazy paving is to ensure that the laying principles are intentional, using one type of (ideally local) stone in varying sizes that complements the materials in the rest of the garden. The joints can be left open for low-growing plants such as herbs to grow in, which increases permeability, too. Or the opposite approach can be taken – the stone can be seamlessly blended together.
“Crazy paving reuses what might otherwise be binned offcuts, broken slabs or unwanted materials being offloaded on online marketplaces,” says Charlotte Harris. “Laid with planting bubbling through the joints is my idea of perfection.”
