I'm a gardening expert and these are 2025's biggest outdoors trends

Planting for the climate:
We can't always predict the weather, but we can prepare for it. In 2025, gardeners are responding to unpredictable weather by choosing plants that thrive in all conditions. Drought-tolerant beauties like sedum, yarrow, and ornamental grasses are growing in popularity, with vibrant colours and diverse textures. At the same time, clever features like rain gardens are cropping up. These are low areas, which soak up excess water and grow moisture-lovers like irises and ferns. These approaches make gardening more resilient and rewarding, whatever the forecast throws at you.

Edimentals - good enough to eat:
Why choose between ornamental and edible when you can have both? This year, "edimentals" (edible ornamentals) are taking centre stage. Colourful chard, ruby-stemmed sorrel, and flowering herbs like chives and thyme.
Even globe artichokes with their sculptural heads all bring beauty as well as bounty. These perennials keep giving year after year, cutting down on work while adding interest and flavour to beds and borders. Whether growing in pots, raised beds, or among your other planting areas, you can have the best of both worlds.

A naturalistic look:
Gardens are going wilder. Naturalistic planting is all about letting borders breathe, with airy perennials and grasses pairing well. Self-seeding plants like verbena bonariensis, cosmos, and poppies emerge where they please, adding life and movement. This style not only looks beautiful, but it's brilliant for bees and butterflies too. With less fuss and more diversity, it's a great way to make your space feel alive. Find out more about attracting pollinators to your garden at my YouTube channel @daviddomoney.

Outdoor rooms with retro charm:
From garden offices to outdoor dining, this year's focus is on maximising space. People are dividing their gardens into "rooms" or "zones" with pergolas and trellises providing structure and purpose. Add a touch of honeysuckle over a seating area or train a clematis up an arch for a sensory delight. Retro is having a revival too, with colourful containers, macrame and upcycled finds adding personality and playfulness. It's a joyful mix between practical and personal, guaranteeing your garden will be packed with character to suit you.

Focus Plant: Wisteria
Few plants deliver a spring spectacle quite like wisteria.
In May, its elegant, cascading flowers in lilac, violet, pink or white transform walls, arches and pergolas into breathtaking features. The blooms appear before the leaves, making them even more striking, and their sweet scent fills the air on sunny days. Bees adore wisteria too, so it's a brilliant addition to wildlife-friendly spaces. Now is the perfect time to enjoy it in bloom and scout out a good spot to plant your own, but hold off planting until late autumn or early spring. It prefers full sun, fertile soil and a strong support to climb. Top varieties include Wisteria sinensis 'Prolific', with masses of violet-blue flowers, and 'Amethyst', offering a slightly deeper hue and dependable early blooms. Wisteria is a vigorous grower, so prune twice a year, in summer and again in winter, to keep it flowering freely and under control.

Fun fact: Wisteria is part of the pea family (Fabaceae). After flowering, it produces pods that resemble peas, though the seeds are toxic if eaten.

• Top Five Gardening Jobs:

  Radishes are quick to mature, often ready in just four to eight weeks. For a continuous harvest, sow seeds every couple of weeks in a sunny, well-drained spot. Sow seeds 1cm deep and 10cm apart, and thin seedlings to prevent overcrowding.

• Primroses can become crowded once they finish blooming. Carefully lift the clump with a fork and gently pull it apart into smaller sections.Replant straight away, water well, and you'll have healthier plants and more flowers next spring.
• With frost risk behind us, dahlias that were started indoors can now go outside. Choose a sunny, sheltered spot and enrich the soil with compost. Plant the tubers with the crown just below the surface. Stake taller types and water them in well to help them establish.
• Late May is the time to give leggy perennials like sedum and phlox the Chelsea chop. Cut back a third to half of the growth to promote bushier plants and prolong flowering into autumn.
• As strawberries begin to develop, tuck straw under the fruit to keep it clean and dry. It helps reduce rot and deters slugs, giving you a healthier, sweeter harvest. Learn more about my strawberry growing advice at my YouTube channel @daviddomoney.

Did You Know?

• During the Great Plague of 1665, lavender was believed to offer protection against disease. People carried it in bunches or wore it in gloves, thinking its fragrance could ward off infection. Modern studies confirm lavender's antiseptic properties, supporting itshistorical use.

• Queen Victoria often sent primroses to her close friend and Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Upon his death in 1881, she laid a wreath of primroses on his grave, referring to them as "his favourite flowers". This gesture led to the establishment of Primrose Day on April 19.

• A possible origin of the word "raspberry" is from "raspise", a type of sweet rose-coloured wine enjoyed in the Middle Ages. Just like the drink, raspberries are richly flavoured. They've been a British garden favourite since the 1500s, prized for their fruit and arching canes.

• Mustard leaves don't just add bite to a salad; they can help your soil. When dug in while green, mustard releases natural compounds that suppress pests and diseases. Known as biofumigation, it's used by organic growers to freshen veg beds between crops.