If you are looking to create a magical, enchanted natural garden at home, you’ll be pleased to know that natural gardens that are wild and organic were the most popular garden design style at this week’s Chelsea Flower Show 2023. If you are looking for ideas on how you can create a natural garden in your own backyard that reflects an unrefined landscape, here are five easy steps to get the look.

1. Plant wild grasses

2. Allow unstructured borders

3. Implement curves and irregular shapes

4. Encourage insects and wildlife

5. Paint walls or fencing in earthy colours

6. Grow a living wall

7. Add natural materials

Plant wild grasses

Wild grasses were everywhere at Chelsea dotted in-between more colourful blooms. Wild grasses add height as they dance attractively in the wind for a soothing and calming natural planting scheme. Stipa tenuissima and Deschampsia cespitosa have evergreen tussocks of stiff, mid-green leaves that work so well alongside delicate blooms in pink, white and blue.

Keep borders unstructured

Rather than sharp edges to your walkways and paths, allow flowers and plants to gently hang over and push through. Precise lines and overly manicured borders are too rigid for a natural garden; instead, a wavy look with the draping and partial coverings of your paths embodies a more natural scheme.

Implement curves and irregular shapes

Curves and irregular shapes are softer on the eye and are more representative of shapes found in the natural world such as stones, water-filled lakes and leaves. Choose garden furniture that has a slight curve or bend to it, or hang blob mirrors or lay pebble-shaped paving or stepping stones.

Encourage insects and wildlife

A natural, plastic-free environment that is representative of meadows and forests attracts wildlife and insects to its habitat. Encourage birds, bees and butterflies by providing shelter with biodiversity houses, as well as planting bee and butterfly-friendly plants such as lavender and lilac bushes.

Paint walls or fencing in earthy colours

Garden walls and fences painted in earthy, sandy, rocky shades blend into a natural garden and become part of the landscape. Take inspiration from Sarah Price’s winning Chelsea garden and use soft pink, stone and terracotta tones to provide a backdrop to your natural garden planting.

Grow a living wall

If painting your walls or fences in earthy tones does not appeal, cover them instead with climbing plants to create a ‘living wall.’ Climbing roses, honeysuckles and jasmine plants all grow fast and provide great coverage that flowers in the warmer months. For an evergreen living wall that grows and covers at an expeditious rate, you can’t go wrong with lush green ivy.

Add natural materials

Avoid plastic or PVC garden furniture or decor and instead, stick to garden furniture made from natural materials such as wood and rattan that changes with the sun and the natural elements. One of my favourite natural garden ideas that I saw at Chelsea was hanging the top half of a vintage wood dresser on an exterior wall to house terracotta pots.