Fancy Plants

Just as interior styles ebb and flow, plant and garden styles cycle in and out of fashion, too. As part of our 70th anniversary review, Helen Young surveys the garden trends that defined seven decades.

- Helen Young

1950S

Suburban gardens in the 1950s featured neat garden beds around a beautiful lawn. Better lawnmowers, plus the promotion of new chemicals and fertilisers to help home gardeners grow the perfect lawn, brought a competitive element to the suburbs. Roses remained firm favourites, especially large tea roses such as ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and ‘Peace’, the latter named for the end of World War II. Flowering shrubs such as camellias, azaleas, diosmas and hydrangeas were popular, and many households still maintained a vegetable garden. Indoors, we embraced the African violet, which thrived under newly popular fluorescent lights. And in 1957 came the creation of the ubiquitous pink flamingo lawn ornament.

1960S

As Modernist houses started to integrate indoors and out in their designs, gardens increasingly became entertainment areas rather than utilitarian spaces. Pergolas, decks and barbecue areas appeared. The lawn, still a source of household pride, acquired new curved shapes. Conifers were prized, such as ‘Swanes golden’ pencil pine (developed by australian nurseryman Ben Swane), neat bookleaf conifers (Thuja) and various dwarf types with blue or gold foliage. We started bringing more plants indoors, such as philodendrons, Swedish ivy and monsteras. and as the swinging ’60s brought us flower power, daisies became the symbol of a loved-up generation of flower children.