Did you hear about the search for the stolen lemons? The police gave up; the search was fruitless.

Garden Media Group’s forecast of gardening trends for 2026 is all about life’s lemons. Gardening has its share of lemons, too, and my curiosity was piqued when I saw the latest predictions.

With the intriguing title “Lemonading,” Garden Media Group’s 2026 Garden Trends Report says the title “is about curiosity in the face of chaos by asking ‘What can I do with this?’ Transforming setbacks into opportunities through creativity, mindfulness, and a sense of joy.”

The 2026 report describes the Lemonading trend as “not ignoring the hard stuff, but acknowledging it, feeling it and then asking: how can I grow from this? Lemonading doesn’t pretend everything is okay. It simply allows us to shine light on what’s possible, without losing sight of reality.”

In this gardening version of “when life gives you lemons,” we can take the hand that nature’s dealt us and reshape it into gardening that’s beautiful, plentiful and positive.

To explain how Lemonading is trending for the upcoming year, Garden Media group lists the following eight categories of activity.

Purpose-driven gardening

One of the strongest currents in the 2026 forecast is gardening with intention — planting not just for beauty, but for pollinators, communities and the planet.

It means planting perennial gardens with flowers blooming in sequence from spring through fall, creating miniature ecosystems in which bees, butterflies and beneficial insects can flourish as well as choosing native perennials and grasses as staples while allowing log piles, ponds and wildflowers to enrich our areas, rather than ignoring them.

The purposeful mindset responds to nature’s realities and lets gardeners make every choice mean more, whether in a sprawling backyard or a sunny windowsill.

Precision gardening: technology meets tradition

Another intriguing trend of 2026 is the blending of data and technology with old-fashioned observation and experience. Technology can help us garden smarter, reduce waste and build resiliency.

Soil sensors can indicate watering needs, apps can anticipate drought or rainfall, tools can guide plant placement and improved apps can help with plant identification.

Technology can’t replace the green thumb intuition that comes with gardening experience, but the two can complement each other.

Level up

Gaming today is bigger and more diverse than ever, with statistics showing 3.4 billion gamers worldwide, nearly half the globe.

Not just for kids and teens anymore, gaming has evolved with half participants women, and with an average age of 36. Gardening gaming is gaining in popularity with nature-inspired games mimicking real-life experiences, such as planting seeds, growing gardens and sharing digital landscapes alongside real-life gardening inspiration.

Horticulture-type gaming can offer small, achievable rewards that imitate a similar satisfaction and mindfulness as tending a real garden, especially in gardening’s off season.

Houseplant collections can become a personal museum for many gardeners.

Alyssa Goelzer / Forum file photo

Personal museum

Gardeners are collectors at heart and that impulse is thriving. Gardeners are creating personal museums of their favorite perennials, tools and exotic new houseplants.

Gardeners are invited to collect and show their gardening pursuits as a way of self-expression and to show their own personality. Heirloom varieties are in vogue, tools passed down through generations are cherished, and plants inherited from elder gardeners are treasured.

A garden becomes more than a space, it becomes our own — a portrait of time, memory and taste.

Botanical bento: bite-sized, big satisfaction

Not knowing what bento means, I found it refers to small, personalized lunch boxes, containers divided into small partitions, or items portioned into small individual sizes.

Modern life can feel sprawling and diffuse, and the botanical bento trend offers structure and joy in small packages. It’s gardening in bite-sized sections, each with a clear purpose and aesthetic role, such as container gardens, mini herb plots by the kitchen door, or dedicated pollinator zones tucked into yard, patio or balcony.

Barkitecture: pets in the garden

Pets aren’t just guests in the garden anymore.

Instead, barkitecture invites pet owners to design landscapes welcoming and functional for dogs, cats and humans alike. That might mean shady napping spots, resilient paths for paws, or sensory spaces filled with textures for critters and caretakers alike.

Garden Media Group named “Faded Petal” as the trending color for 2026 — it is a quiet, soft, dusty rose.

Contributed

Color of the year: ‘Faded Petal’

Lastly, this year’s trending color is a quiet, soft, dusty rose; the opposite of billboard pink. This muted shade is popular with millennials’ and Gen Z’s desire for authenticity and understated elegance.

Paired with earthy tones, lush foliage and textures like weathered wood or vintage pottery, selecting flowers in shades similar to “Faded Petal” transforms gardens into serene, sophisticated sanctuaries.

Here’s to gardening with joy in 2026 — gardens that give back, gardens that reflect each of our stories and gardens that meet us where we are: imperfect, hopeful and ready to make something wonderful happen from every gardening challenge.