The Year of Backyard Bliss
Climate responsible yards, full and lush plantings, and functionality popular outdoor living trends.
Yardzen’s annual trend report compiles yearly trend data from homeowner requests and insights from our expert designers, signaling meaningful changes in landscaping style and functional needs. To date, Yardzen has collected responses from over one million homeowners across the United States, which makes this the most comprehensive outdoor design report available.
This year the data tells a story that homeowners are investing in outdoor projects that increase their enjoyment at home. With high interest rates, many homeowners are delaying an imminent move and investing in creating landscaping that makes them feel happy, whole, and connected while staying home.
A throughline in many of these trends is a fundamental shift in outdoor style—the clean lines of modernism give way to organic textures and forms, heavy on habitat-supporting and pollinator-loving plants and trees. This is good for the planet and good for the psyche—the emerging field of “green care” demonstrates the significant therapeutic benefits of being outdoors and around plants, further emphasizing the trend toward creating enjoyment at home through outdoor spaces.
Style
2023 Top Outdoor Style: Organic
The top trend in outdoor design is a feeling and a style. A movement away from the rigidity of modernism—clean lines, stark contrasts, orderly plantings—and a renewed appreciation for the joy of organic shapes and textures. Transitional in nature (neither contemporary or traditional), organic style draws on many of the hallmarks of the English cottage garden with abundant shrubs and flowers, gravel paths and patios, stone, interlacing pavers reminiscent of cobblestone, and antique-inspired decor. Think: any home in a Nancy Meyer movie.
Maximalist Plantings
Yardzen clients are gravitating to “full and lush” plantings opposed to “sparse” softscaping. This fits nicely with our top style, organic, which embraces untamed and dense plantings, although “full and lush” plants can translate across styles, from tropical to traditional. Building on our overarching theme of enjoyment in the yard, this natural exuberance of full plantings creates calm and relaxation. Plus, the more native and climate adapted plants, the better for the environment!
Immersive Yards: Designing on both a Horizontal and Vertical Plane
A tried and true landscaping principle for drawing the gaze through the yard is to design on both the horizontal and vertical plane, think: pathways, arbors, trellises, and even gazebos for climbing vines. This year’s data reflects this desire for playing with height in order to amplify the visual impact of the yard and immersing the viewer in the organic space.
Functionality
Yards for Wellness
Yardzen clients demonstrate an ever-increasing desire to use their yards for wellness, creating spaces devoted to relaxation and rejuvenation. Study after study shows that being outside is good for your health, plus, the backyard affords additional square footage for dedicated wellness elements. Yardzen clients are seeking out ways to transform their outdoor space into spa-like environments with saunas, cedar tubs, cold plunges, yoga platforms, and outdoor showers. This trend continues to grow especially as more remote workers find ways to achieve a “digital detox” in their own home and work space.
The Plunge Pool
The plunge pool emerged as a top trend amongst Yardzen clients in 2022, and the trend continues with a 15% YoY increase in plunge pools in Yardzen designs. Plunge pools, which are less expensive, require less maintenance, and take up less space than a traditional swimming pool, are a top choice for clients who are eager for a contained water feature that looks beautiful in any yard.
Creative Use of Space
As homeowners hunker down in their current home, they are looking for creative solutions to expand their square footage. Many Yardzen clients are getting creative with space by adding sheds to their yard—the much less expensive option to an ADU. Tuff Shed is Yardzen’s go-to with several customization options to create the perfect storage solution, home office, kid hangout, or gardening shed.
Yards for Play
Over 70% of Yardzen clients are parents, and every year, these homeowners demonstrate an increasing desire to create a backyard for play. In keeping with our 2023 theme of enjoyment in the yard, parents want to create a yard that is not only beautiful, but fun and enriching for their kids, helping keep them off of screens and connecting with each other and finding joy outdoors.
Get Your Hands Dirty
The pandemic ignited a desire for growing fruits and vegetables at home, and that trend is here to stay. Since 2020, we’ve seen requests for edible gardens and raised beds increase every year, and that trend is not showing any sign of stopping. Homeowners want to get their hands dirty and grow their own food (especially as produce prices soar).
Day-to-Night Backyards for the Outdoor Entertainer
One of the top requests amongst Yardzen clients is room to entertain, and among these homeowners, they want amenities in their yard that transition their outdoor spaces from day to night. This includes long dining tables for large groups, outdoor bars, pizza ovens, and heaters for memorable evenings under the stars.
The Outdoor Living Room
Fire pits have long been a favorite amongst Yardzen clients—almost 60% of Yardzen designs have a firepit in them. While fire pits remain a top request, there has been a notable spike in requests for outdoor fireplaces this year as more and more homeowners translate their favorite interior amenities to their outdoor rooms.
Climate-Responsible Yards
The New Lawn
There is no denying sod lawns are a net-negative for the environment. The inputs required—water, fertilizer, gas-powered blowers and mowers—and the scant benefits to pollinators and habitat means that our design team is on a mission to reduce as much lawn as possible in our clients’ yards. Of course, we understand that homeowners have real, unique needs for lawn for kids, pets, and as a regional style in areas with abundant precipitation, and so our stance on sod grass is nuanced: reduce as much lawn in your yard as you can.
Designing for Drought
With extreme drought in the West and historic drought conditions through much of the country, homeowners nationwide are rethinking water usage in their yard. Even in areas with high rainfall, the thought of watering a lawn is becoming increasingly unpalatable as we think about a changing climate and the future of water resources worldwide.
Bring on the Trees
Many trees are keystone species, which means that even adding one to a yard can exponentially improve the environmental impact of the landscape by creating habitat. We also know that trees are crucial for reducing climate-warming heat islands, and there is a growing body of research that indicates that trees create safer communities (University of Washington) and increase property values (Arbor Day Foundation). The function and aesthetics benefits of trees are numerous, too—they create privacy, act as “statement” specimens in a design, and add lushness and depth to a yard. Yardzen is proud that 47% of Yardzen clients request additional trees in their yard, which is up 12% year over year.
Yardzen is an all-online design process alternative to traditional landscape design. Their talented team includes passionate horticulturalists, inventive software engineers, world-class landscape architects, exterior designers, creative marketers, construction experts, curious product managers, operations whizzes and experienced company builders—with a shared vision to help you live better outside.