The 10 best ideas for your garden from BBC Gardeners World Live 2023

Here’s the pick of the best ideas for your garden from BBC Gardeners World Live 2023.

Of course, we can never reproduce show garden perfection in our own gardens, but the ideas and trends they showcase can really add wow factor to your garden.

And the BBC Gardeners World Live shows have lots of small garden interest, with show gardens and smaller ‘Showcase’ gardens. Then there is an even smaller ‘Beautiful Borders’ section and even planted up wheelbarrows.

One of the reasons that show gardens look so good is the level of attention to detail. So foliage colours are very deliberately chosen, either to harmonise or contrast with the flower colour themes.

Just a little extra planning lifts a colour scheme from ‘quite pretty’ to ‘gorgeous’. And this is definitely something we could work on in our own gardens.

Corten steel has been increasingly used in garden design over the past five years. It has a wonderfully rustic texture, yet it’s a contemporary material, so it fits in either town or country gardens. The rusty tones of the steel add a warmth that’s unusual for hard landscaping materials.

People moving into new build homes often find that builders have left a lot of rubble. They cover it with topsoil and lawn. It looks fine at first but the lawn often fails and plants fail to thrive, too.

The only answer is to spend time picking out bricks, stones and other rubble before planting up. And instead of having to take it away, pile it up in a corner and use it to create a mini rock garden.

It’s astonishing how quickly nature will colonise a pile of rocks or rubble, but see this post for rock garden plants and tips.