8 Creative Themes to Bring Your Dream Garden to Life

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Not sure where to start with your garden? Choosing a theme helps. These ideas share ways to create a garden that reflects your style while harmonizing with the natural environment.

If you’re on a budget, see 7 Cheap (But Smart) Tips to Create Your Dream Garden for my best thrifty tips.

Creative Garden Themes

Dreaming of a unique garden space but unsure where to begin? Choosing themes (repeating elements) can really help.

At its foundation, a garden is part of the local ecosystem formed by the climate, land, water, plants, and animals that bring it to life. That’s why our planting decisions are so important. The right ones help sustain the web of life.

From there, we have endless creative possibilities.

When I was starting my garden, I was overwhelmed with choices until the idea of using themes came up.

Once I decided on some favorites, decisions were much easier.

In my case I went for blue as a repeating color, thrifted garden art, and a cottage style overflowing with flowers, fruits, and vegetables, and wildlife.

My vision started out fairly cultivated but, over time, with so many birds, bees, butterflies, bats, frogs, and more relying on the space, the overall look of the garden is more naturalized.

Your dream garden will be some other distinctive mix of your favorite elements.

Here are some suggestions.

1Native Plants & Pollinators

Native plants and butterfly pollinating flower — Native plants and wildlife are an important part of a thriving garden

This is both a theme and eco-friendly approach to gardening. By choosing a diverse selection of native and well-adapted plants (that support the animals that co-evolved with them), we’re creating a garden that can thrive for years to come.

What works best will vary for each of us based on location and growing conditions.

This lists favorite books I have found useful for increasing the selection of native plants in my garden.

You might also want to join the North American Native Plant Society—an excellent resource for learning about restoring native plants to developed areas (like our gardens).

Bee hovering over flowers in the garden.

2Color

Blue-themed garden decor including plates, cushions, art, and doors. — Blue-themed garden art and decor

If you like a garden to have a really cohesive look, a color theme works nicely. My color theme started when we chose the paint color for our shed door during this shed makeover. I really like the color and it stands out nicely in the garden. But you don’t have to settle on just one color. Perhaps there’s a combination of colors you love?

Repeated in the decor, garden art, and plants, there are many opportunities to weave a theme through the space.

You can explore more blue garden ideas here.

Table top garden with flowering potted plants and various decorative treasures.

3Inside Outside

Household items used as garden art including a bed frame, sink, stove, and bathtub. — Household items used as outdoor decor

If you’ve been an Empress of Dirt reader for some time (thank you!), you know I love repurposing household items as garden art, especially when the item would otherwise go to landfill.

My friend Nicole added a bathtub, sink, and more to her beautiful garden in Australia. I really love her style and those giant agave plants are just wow.

I saw this garden bed frame in a vegetable and flower bed on a garden tour. The gardener had all sorts of wonderful artistic touches!

4Flowers & Food

Flowers and food growing in the garden — Flowers, fruits, and vegetables grow very nicely together

I started growing vegetables amongst flowers entirely out of necessity. My first garden was small and I wanted to grow everything!

Turns out, there are lots of advantages. Some say combining plants this way “confuses” pests. I’m not sure if there’s science to back that but I did have excellent harvests. The biggest struggle was rabbits but, once I started using raised beds, they did not find my crops. I guess they don’t hop up!

I also used the tall flowers to provide shade for vegetables that didn’t like direct sun. And overall, the entire garden was a pollinator haven.

This also brings up the topic of companion planting—something I happily ignore.

While there are very specific studies about relationships between certain plants (or certain plants and animals), they are just that—very specific studies, often in controlled settings, usually pertaining to commercial growers.

But, as humans tend to do, we’ve somehow created a whole world of gardening advice that combines old-fashioned folklore with made-up friends and enemy plant lists based on some combination of unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence and imagination. These companion planting lists can be so extensive that you’d never be able to plant anything if you tried to accommodate all the rules. This is not to say there aren’t relationships to be discovered. We’ve just gotten way ahead of the facts by making things up.

Do yourself a favor and just stick to the basics, giving plants the soil, water, light, and space they need.

Assorted types of flower seeds to start indoors in winter.

5Giants

Giant garden art decor — Giant, over-sized garden art and planters

This is another favorite of mine—giant or over-sized garden plants and art.

You can see examples including giant old wagon wheels, my DIY giant coneflower, and other large items that really stand out in the garden.

Giant bird nest made from tree branches.

Related: DIY Giant Garden Art Bird Nest

6Collections

Watering can garden art — Old watering cans are a popular collectible for the garden

If you are a collector, it’s no surprise when your collections spill over into the garden. I have a fondness for old, galvanized watering cans. Once they start leaking, they get reassigned to the garden art department!

Other collections I’ve seen include:

Anything you like that can withstand the weather is fair game.

7Rocks & Stones

Collage of rocks and stones in the garden — If you have access to rocks and stones, use them to define your garden style

You can think of this theme as making lemonade from lemons. Many of us tend to overlook the beauty of any local resources that are abundant. A funny example is moss. My west coast garden friends are always looking for ways to minimize it (or get rid of it all together) but where I live it’s rare and welcomed.

The same goes for rocks and stones. If they are free and plentiful, consider creative and new ways to use them. I live on a sand bank and in all my years of gardening have never found a single rock or stone—so if you do have them, I envy you!

This has examples of creative stepping stone and brick pathway ideas.

I used the stones leftover after building my pond to create post holders for the privacy wall you see here: DIY Raised Garden Bed with Privacy Fence.