Goth Gardening: Building the Garden of Your Dreams, or Nightmares!

Add drama with dark and moody plants for a gothic-style garden

Are you an admirer of the shadowy corners of a garden? Do plants with thorns, spiky foliage, or dark pigmentation get your heart racing just as much (if not more) than an array of brightly colored flowers? Then this lesson in goth gardening from Meg Varnes, the conservatory and formal gardens horticulturalist at New England Botanic Gardens at Tower Hill, might introduce you to some spooky plants and moody design ideas that will make your landscape more dramatic and elegant.

And for those who think this unconventional style might be a bit too creepy for their taste, there is far more to this type of garden than a palette of black blooms. Goth gardening is all about contrast, the dichotomy of light and dark, and how that can be utilized for intense interest in the garden. You might not want to transform your entire landscape into a gothic getaway, but any garden can benefit from incorporating some of these dark, moody, or mysterious plants.

Goth gardening plants featured:

1. ‘Patent Leather’ coleus (Coleus ‘Patent Leather’, annual)
2. Bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare, Zones 4–9)
3. ‘Freckle Face’ blackberry lily (Iris domestica ‘Freckle Face’, Zones 5–10)
4. ‘Mystic Illusion’ dahlia (Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’, Zones 8–11)
5. ‘All Gold’ Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’, Zones 5–9)
6. Malevolence (Solanum atropurpureum, Zones 9–11 or as an annual)
7. ‘Blackhawks’ big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii ‘Blackhawks’, Zones 3–9)
8. Redbor kale (Brassica ‘Redbor’, annual)
9. ‘Merlot’ cabbage (Brassica ‘Merlot’, annual)
10. Autumnale fuchsia (Fuchsia × autumnale, annual)
11. Oleander (Nerium oleander, Zones 8–10)
12. Cheiro Roxa hot pepper (Capsicum chinense, annual)
13. ‘Eclipse’ bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Eclipse’, Zones 5–9)
14. Elephant’s ear (Colocasia spp., Zones 8–11)

Check out these related articles: