If your home was built in the last ten years and has sleek, minimalist architectural features, its style is considered ‘contemporary.’ Exterior materials are likely stone, steel, glass, and wood, with a restrained color palette and limited ornamentation. Simplicity, sustainability, and geometry are all major priorities in contemporary home design.
The same principles apply to contemporary garden design. Think of the property around your contemporary home as an extension of its unique architecture, and you’ll be off to a great start. Create a layout that reflects and repeats the lines of your home’s structure and choose hardscape materials that harmonize architecturally. Finally, prioritize sustainability features such as water conservation, solar power, and recycled materials in the plan.
When selecting plants for your contemporary home garden, consider form and foliage first, beginning with trees and shrubs that provide textural and structural interest without being unruly. Opt for native perennial species that are hardy in your zone and easy to maintain, limiting flower color to a single palette or sticking to one section of the color wheel.
Planning a contemporary home garden does not have to be an overwhelming experience once the garden ‘bones’ are in place. To help you with plant selection, we’ve profiled 19 shrubs, trees, and perennials to get your contemporary garden juices flowing. Read on for a look at their unique characteristics, growing preferences, and maintenance requirements.
Mugo Pine
Slow, stylish, and versatile, perfect for modern landscapes.
This soft-needled evergreen tree is slow-growing but highly attractive and easy to keep tidy. Its overall habit is rounded, but it can be encouraged to grow horizontally or vertically with targeted pruning. Mugo Pine’s blueish hue contrasts nicely with other traditional green foliage plants.
On a contemporary property, Mugo Pine has filtering qualities and may provide relief from traffic noise or urban sound pollution. Stagger a row of ‘Columnaris’ to screen a neighbor or seclude a patio. Install a line of ‘Mini Mini’ for small-scale texture and geometry.
Sugar Maple
A year-round showstopper, perfect for modern landscapes.
Providing four-season interest, relief from the sun, and a clean, columnar form, sugar maple fits right into a contemporary home landscape design. Its bright green leaves have five lobes and turn brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow in the fall.
Sugar maple’s bark and branches are light gray to gray-brown in color, and it has an attractive winter form. It’s highly resistant to insects and disease, which makes for relatively low maintenance. Park one at the Southwest corner of your property to shield your contemporary home from the hot afternoon sun and keep the utility bills in check.
Parlor Palm
Create a tropical oasis with parlor palms in sleek planters.
If your contemporary home is located in a humid, tropical region, consider filling a long concrete planter with a row of parlor palms. This low-maintenance palm has compact, finely textured fronds that are bright green in color.
It grows well in containers but can also be planted directly in the soil. As an understory plant, parlor palm prefers dappled or indirect light and some protection from the hot sun.
Paper Birch
Embrace modern mountain charm with elegant paper birch trees.
Giving off a modern mountain home vibe, paper birch is a go-to tree for contemporary garden landscapers, particularly in wooded and mountainous regions. Though it can be a little messy with its exfoliating bark and helicopter seed pods, this is such a beautiful tree, we think you’ll find it’s worth the fuss.
Paper birch lends white, vertical interest to a landscape that might otherwise be low-slung, horizontal, and green. Its leaves are oval with serrated margins, and they turn brilliant shades of yellow in fall. Architects often design contemporary homes with a birch-peppered courtyard and a large glass wall to bring the outside in. As an added bonus, birch acts as a larval host to several moth and butterfly species.
Boxwood
Craft a sleek garden atmosphere with versatile boxwood shrubs.
Easy to shape and control, boxwood shrubs have a tidy, evergreen presence in the contemporary home garden. With small green leaves and a dense branching habit, boxwoods can be sheared into round, square, or pyramidal forms, depending on the species.
Plant multiple boxwood shrubs in a row to extend your home’s foundation line or create a backdrop for smaller orb-shaped grasses. ‘Green Mountain’ has a conical shape and lends some height to the landscape, maxing out at five feet tall. ‘Emerald Jewel’ makes an ideal hedge.
Cinquefoil
For effortless elegance, adorn your landscape with colorful cinquefoil.
Efficient, compact, floriferous, and very low maintenance, cinquefoil earns a place in many of today’s home landscapes. Its small, blue-green leaves are densely arranged along multi-stemmed branches radiating from a central axis, which makes shaping cinquefoil into a tidy orb an easy task.
Flowers are cup-shaped, averaging between one and three inches in width. They cover the shrub’s exterior for much of the summer in hues of red, yellow, pink, and white. Plant a string of ‘Happy Face Yellow’ cinquefoils around the arch of a backyard stone patio for a neat, sunny border. Choose ‘Creme Brulée’ for an all-white flower scheme that hits minimalist, contemporary notes.
Maiden grass
Add modern flair to your garden with non-invasive maiden grass.
This grass is threatening to the native flora. If you live in areas where this plant is classed as an invasive species, choose something else as a go-to for contemporary home applications. For those outside the invasive range, maiden grass has graceful, strappy leaves in shades of green, brown, and pink. They arch outward in a fountain shape, encircling the feathery seed plumes at their center.
For a small garden, try ‘Little Kitten,’ which maxes out at three feet. Plant ‘Cosmopolitan’ for variegated green and cream foliage that adds structural interest.
Hakone Grass
Transform your landscape with cascading Hakone grass varieties.
This shade-loving, perennial grass features ten-inch strappy leaves that are chartreuse in summer and blueish-pink in fall. Perfect for a contemporary home built on a bluff or steep slope, Hakone grass has a cascading form that resembles flowing water when planted in large groups.
Small sprays of yellow-green flowers peek out above the leaves in summer, but they are often camouflaged by Hakone’s dense, mounding foliage. Choose ‘All Gold’ to replace traditional grass in a small-scale contemporary landscape. ‘Stripe it Rich’ gives you variegated leaves that help it stand apart from other grasses.
Mondo Grass
Enhance your modern landscape with versatile mondo grass varieties.
Also known as lilyturf, mondo grass is an evergreen groundcover from the asparagus family. Adaptable to both sunny and shady locations, mondo grass spreads by underground stolons to create a colony. In a contemporary home landscape, it often serves as a grass alternative or a decorative geometric feature.
Mondo grass tolerates heat and salt particularly well so it’s often incorporated into landscape designs for modern coastal homes. ‘Nigrescens’ has dark purple foliage that reads almost black, which is kind of cool against the steel and glass of contemporary architecture. ‘Nana’ is very dark green and small in stature at three to six inches tall. It resembles turf grass from a distance and tolerates moderate foot traffic.
Agave
Add a touch of desert chic with resilient agave plants.
A tried and true desert landscape plant, agave gives off a contemporary vibe when paired with new construction that is slick and minimalist. With great tolerance for heat and drought, agave also ticks the sustainability box for many home gardeners.
Agave’s leaves grow from a central rosette and radiate outward. Foliage is fleshy and finely-tipped with serrated or prickly margins. Agave blooms only once in its lifetime and it’s truly a sight to behold. Sometime between 10 and sometimes 80 years after planting, a towering spire of yellow flowers will soar to a height of up to 30 feet, which is truly a sight to behold. But this will only happen once in the plant’s lifetime. At the same time, the plant will produce pups that can be used to propagate more agaves.
Hosta
Elegant hostas add effortless beauty to contemporary landscape designs.
Simplicity in form and ease of care are major priorities for a contemporary home garden, and few perennial plants fit that requirement better than the hosta. In sizes ranging from dwarf to giant and colors ranging from blue to forest green, hosta can play a variety of roles in the landscape.
Leaves can be ovate, oblong, or strappy. They fan outward from a basal rosette at the soil surface in a form that’s neat and consistent. Plant 20 ‘Sum and Substance’ along the concrete walkway of your contemporary home or grid out 100 ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ in a shady patch where grass won’t grow.
Lily of the Nile
Vertical accents for modern landscapes are provided by Lily of the Nile.
Another plant that provides vertical structure in the modern landscape, Lily of the Nile features upright, narrow leaves that remain evergreen year-round in most zones. It also sends up one to two-foot sprays of umbel-shaped flowers in hues of purple, white, and pink each summer.
Install Lily of the Nile in a horizontal planter box that marks your contemporary home’s property line, or plant groups of four in a checkerboard pattern with another upright perennial. Choose ‘Polar Ice’ for a restrained, white palette or ‘Blue Heaven’ for an understated light purple color scheme.
Speedwell
Add a burst of color with spiky flowers in your garden.
Speedwell is a pollinator favorite that’s perfect for an eco-friendly landscape. Its spiky pink, purple, and white flowers add vertical interest while hitting modern garden notes. As a native to coastal, mountain, and piedmont regions, speedwell is a natural choice for contemporary homes in those areas. ‘Aspire’ has sharply-pointed, bright pink flowers. ‘Purple Illusion’ has a softer, more rounded form.
Coneflower
Invite pollinators with colorful daisy-like blooms in your garden.
If your contemporary home is in an eastern or central prairie region of the United States, consider working some coneflower into the landscape. A friend to the bees and butterflies, coneflower is an important part of the ecosystem and an attractive, easy-to-grow perennial.
Blooms are daisy-like, with spiny central disks encircled by rays of elongated petals in shades of purple, pink, gold, red, and white. Leaves are lance-shaped near the bottom of sturdy stems and oval-shaped closer to the flower heads. Coneflower requires some deadheading but is otherwise low maintenance.
Lavender
Lure bees to your modern rock garden with aromatic lavender.
An ideal choice for rocky or loamy soil, lavender works well in the modern rock garden. Highly fragrant and attractive to bees, lavender flowers are tubular, spiky, and upright. Species vary in color from dark purple to lavender to creamy white. Foliage is gray-green and feathery, offering great texture and contrast.
Lavender can occupy a lot of space and still look tidy, which makes it perfect for contemporary settings. Choose ‘Imperial Gem’ for a rounded, shrub-like form that maxes out at two feet or ‘Platinum Blonde’ for a looser structure with light green, variegated leaves.
Tickseed
Invite summer cheer into your garden with vibrant tickseed blooms.
Another sandy soil favorite, tickseed will keep sending up cheerful yellow flowers from late spring to late summer if you’re willing to deadhead a bit. Small, daisy-like blooms cover most of the surface of this dome-shaped plant. Foliage is finely textured and densely arranged.
Plant tickseed alongside marigolds and zinnia for a restrained yellow color scheme, or use it to draw pollinators to your modern kitchen garden. ‘Sunfire’ has sheared petal edges and burgundy centers for a little pizzazz, while ‘Imperial Sun’ keeps things simple enough for a minimalist contemporary garden.
Alyssum
Transform your garden with alyssum’s fragrant, colorful carpet effect.
With tiny, delicate blooms that resemble clover flowers, alyssum has an understated plant profile. When planted in a large group, however, it becomes something else altogether. Emitting a strong scent and spreading quickly to fill in a large area, alyssum becomes a colorful carpet that keeps blooming for most of the season, depending on where you live.
In a contemporary home garden, use alyssum as a ground cover plant to insulate the soil and brighten up a dull patch of land. To hit minimalist garden notes, fill a standing planter with one of the taller varieties and let it spill gracefully over its sides. Alyssum is an annual plant, so it will not return next season, but it’s easy and inexpensive to grow from seed.
Stonecrop
Transform your landscape with stonecrop’s vibrant, drought-tolerant groundcover.
A prolific ground cover that tolerates drought and spreads quickly, stonecrop is heavily featured in contemporary garden design. This sun-loving succulent has fleshy leaves in shades of blue, green, gray, gold, and burgundy. The flowers are small and insignificant, but they do appear in summer or fall, depending on the species.
Plant stonecrop in the rock garden or as a lawn alternative. Choose ‘Sea Star’ for an aquatic vibe, as it resembles an aquarium plant, or ‘Angelina’s Teacup’ for a rolling chartreuse carpet of color.
Pachysandra
Transform your landscape with vibrant, year-round pachysandra groundcover.
Pachysandra is a versatile plant that spreads easily and stays green year-round in most climates. A relative of the boxwood, pachysandra is native to Japan and China and looks great in almost any setting. Its toothed leaves are arranged in a whorled pattern around a central stem that shoots up from underground rhizomes.
In a modern garden, pachysandra often replaces traditional turf grass or covers the roots of a mature tree. ‘Green Carpet’ is known for being the neatest variety with the most consistent leaf patterns and looks great in a geometric, contemporary bed. ‘Green Sheen’ has a slightly higher tolerance for sun and heat.
Ask your local extension office before planting, as pachysandra has earned invasive status in some regions.
Final Thoughts
Think of the property around your contemporary home as an extension of the architecture, and incorporate plants that reflect its unique features. Look for hardscape and edging materials derived from the home’s exterior construction.
Choose plants that will be in harmony with your region and growing conditions to reduce strain on the environment. Focus on foliage and form while keeping flower color restrained to just one or two hues, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving the contemporary home garden of your dreams.
