Are you ready for what’s coming next in garden trends? The Big. The Bold. Textured via Leaf. It started indoors – remember when all those New York lofts filled with monsteras and elephant ears? Now it has spilled outdoors into the landscape where it’s looking even better. Here are some suggestions of the big and bold plants to use in your garden…

Q: What’s big and bold? A: Any plant that has the sort of foliage that makes you stop and take another look. For most plants, we’re usually interested in the flowers they produce: it’s the rose we remember not its leaves. The Big and Bold plant trend celebrates plants with tall stature, large leaves, and foliage with stand-out texture and/or colour.

Q: Which plants to use? A: There are no firm rules here apart from two: 1. make sure the plants you select really stand out, and 2. that they are happy to grow where you plan to put them. (A bit of swift checking around online will confirm this.) Monsteras and Philodendrons are broad-leaved and super bold. Cordylines like Burgundy Spire™ and Festival™ Burgundy (also known as Red Fountain in the Southern Hemisphere) are brilliant ways to contribute punchy, strappy colour. Fatsia and bird’s nest ferns add different leaf shapes into the green mix. And there are always the Tropicanna® cannas to punch even more colour into the mix.

Q: How to go about it? A: If you’re planting from scratch, congratulations because you can go two ways. 1. Pick your favourite plant and fill your garden bed solely with that, like a staggered three-row deep planting of Cordyline Burgundy Spire filling a long bed beside the drive.  2. Or go crazy and grab a few of everything and mix it all up. This is especially good for a garden space on view from the living room as it will feel like being in an oversized terrarium. Of course if you already have a garden that you want to rev up with bold additions, that’s easy. Just add things in here and there, mixing it all up and keeping the bigger plants to the back. Aim for at least a third of the garden to be new additions or you’ll miss the mark.

Q: Any other tips? A: Not really, apart from two obvious ones. When you’re deciding which plants to use, check out their character references. In other words, are they easy to grow and will they look after themselves? And the other obvious tip is surprisingly often overlooked: if you spot a dead leaf, remove it just like you’d cut off a spent flower. Five minutes with the secateurs will work wonders refreshing your bold-foliaged garden outlook.