Backyard Designs

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Landscape design trends will focus on the back yard next year. Designers have recognized Americans' recent renewal of enthusiasm for nesting and refocusing on home and family to create breathtaking backyard spaces. City dwellers across the country have picked up the mantra "grow food, not grass," incorporating all types of fruits and vegetables into traditional landscape design. Herb gardens proliferate in window boxes that previously focused on colorful blossoms. Taking the trend a step further, people are also flocking to join the urban chicken-coop movement. Here are the top three backyard landscape design trends you can expect to see in 2015.

Creating Backyard Zones

You might not care much for living in a home that is one big room and, in many ways, your yard is no different. Yet most of us consider the back yard to be one single space. While you probably don't want walls dividing your yard, you can create distinct zones designed for different purposes. Landscape designers will be taking that indoor-living ethos outside next year, creating zones for playing, dining, gardening and relaxing.

Breaking the yard into smaller spaces will help you focus more easily on laying out each segment. Your dining space may simply be a grill and a bistro table, but it might also be an entire outdoor kitchen. The relaxing space might be a simple hammock in a quiet corner, or an elaborate pergola with loungers and a place for yoga or meditation. Growing zones might feature a container garden, cactus collection, or your favorite rose varieties. In the play zone, consider adding lawn darts, croquet, badminton or a playhouse.

Create the Perfect Path

Designers will delineate backyard zones next year with pathways. Creating an enchanting path is a perfect off-season project for your garden, before you get busy with spring planting. A garden path can become a work of art when you think beyond concrete sidewalks and stepping-stones. Use bricks or concrete pavers to create an interesting chevron pattern, or use gravel bordered by mosses of varying heights. Sink large concrete squares or flagstone slabs at grade level, assuring that you can mow over them easily. Create a negative space path by using turf grass with stacked stone growing beds along each edge.

Flora and Fauna

The third design trend you will see lots more of next year is the incorporation of fauna, either domesticated or wild. The urban chicken movement is growing exponentially, as urbanites add creative coops to their back yards. Themed chicken shelters range from Victorian mansions (in chicken-sized scale, of course) to traditional red barns. Beehives are another popular backyard addition, providing a safe haven for the threatened bee population.