Building on Melbourne 2025's Pragmatic Garden Evolutions theme, this year’s show highlights easy, everyday, characterful gardens that function as another room in the house – hardworking spaces that require minimal input with high reward. Even the planting palette is easy on the eye, featuring soft shades of pink and coral alongside lots of green varietals

Incorporating natural, living structures in outside spaces provides sensorial wellbeing benefits for humans while boosting environmental and wildlife biodiversity. Organic, cocooning shapes create a sense of comfort and play – that irresistible feeling of being half-hidden while still connected to the surrounding garden – also see CMF for Sensory Engagement.

Immersive, escapist gardens take visitors to faraway places, with Chinese and Japanese influences offering poetic and meditative ambiences, and hidden gems with roots in nature and philosophy. Elsewhere, grandiose Mediterranean-inspired landscapes feature towering trees, frothy blooms and immaculate, lush lawns.

Spurred by the show’s Kaleidoscope theme, Southern Hemisphere florists and designers are currently channeling a brightly coloured, kitsch, nostalgic vibe. From artificial neon to saccharine pastels, this refreshingly bold use of colour feels very directional and follows maximalist interiors trends – see our eccentric S/S 26 Direction Quirk.

Climate change and extreme weather are driving an influx of rugged, resilient, low maintenance landscapes that function on low water consumption. Grey-green native coastal succulents and groundcover plants are especially prominent, as are dry gardening techniques that use gravel and bark mulch.