The Garden Media Group has released its 2026 Garden Trends Report and there’s one trend standing out as the most satisfying idea for our backyards: botanical bento.
It’s the concept of creating a garden bento box: neat, compact garden design with everything you need in reaching distance to bring a backyard idea to life. ‘Everything is distilled into smaller, smarter, and more intentional formats, from communication to content to consumer products,’ the 2026 Garden Trends Report states. ‘The rise of the bento design literally means curated spatial compartments. Each item has purpose and contributes visually to overall harmony,’ it continues.
Everything has its place in a garden bento box design
(Image credit: Jacky Hobbs/Future)
As the Garden Media Group reports: ‘A bento box isn’t just a container – it’s a concept.
‘Thoughtful, convenient, aesthetically pleasing, and emotionally generous. Everything has its place. Every element is curated.’
The idea of a garden bento box is therefore the opposite to the likes of chaos gardening and wild gardening. Rather, each plant is carefully chosen, companion planting is made use of, the perfect planters are selected to serve function and form, and garden rooms are vital to maximizing your outdoor space.
‘Not just ‘little treats,’ but lovely moments made accessible. It’s not random. It’s art,’ the trends report continues.
It’s a trend to please container gardeners, as well as those with a larger yard looking for some order in quiet corners. Think capsule gardening and organized garden design, where every detail has been carefully selected and placed to make the use of your outdoor space personal and convenient.
3 ways to incorporate bento gardening to your yard
Intrigued to start your own garden bento box? There are lots of ways to get this satisfying design in your yard, whether you’re working with lots of space or something more limited:
1. Create a seasonal bento container
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Containers are the easiest place to start when it comes to embracing garden bento design. They provide the perfect vessel to incorporate a few select plants, and making seasonal choices will allow them to truly thrive and brighten up corners of your yard.
‘Curate seasonal ‘garden bento’ boxes – beautifully packaged, compact, and coordinated by pollinator type,’ the Garden Media Group suggests.
There are plenty of spring planter ideas to embrace, and you can spruce up your spring containers for summer before incorporating fall flowers for pots.
Choose container plants for pollinators to bring some buzz to your bento design. As the report suggests, you could even have a dedicated pot for each pollinator – try coneflowers (seeds from Amazon) for bees and butterflies, for example.
The thriller, spiller, filler container planting method also offers this bento satisfaction, with each element being fundamental to the impact of the display.
2. Divide your garden into different sections
(Image credit: Chuck Place via Alamy)
This one is a slightly bigger project, but you can also turn your garden into a large-scale bento box. Use hedges and natural arches to create doorways and walls that create different compartments in your yard.
Much like a walled garden design, each space in your yard can be dedicated to a particular purpose. It could be that you have a kitchen garden in one corner, a cottage garden to escape to in another, and maybe even a memory garden to pay tribute to loved ones: everything you look for in a garden, neatly organized in your yard.
You can use garden privacy ideas to create screening between each space. Think clean lines, garden paths linking each section, and functional design that allows you to use your outdoor space to the fullest.
3. Grow an experience garden
(Image credit: Future/Allan Pollok-Morris)
Another way the Garden Media Group suggests incorporating a garden bento is by creating a garden that serves an interactive experience.
This could be anything from a garden to grow your own herbal tea (with these herbal tea plant seeds from Amazon), to a dye garden, or even a cut flower garden for floristry. It may even be an indoor herb garden on your kitchen windowsill.
This requires growing the particular plants needed for the desired experience; it’s treating planting as ingredients and tools.
But it isn’t just about the plants. Your experience garden may need additional features, like a potting bench or a tool shed, equipped with a garden belt (from Amazon) and pruners (from Amazon), for example. It’s essential to have everything you need within easy access for this garden bento idea to work.
This isn’t the only garden trend to emerge from the Garden Media Group’s 2026 Garden Trends Report. They also revealed ‘faded petal’ as color of the year in the garden, and it’s good news for indoor gardeners as collectible houseplants are taking center stage next year.
Shop beautiful containers for your garden bento
Ninehaoou
Large Vintage Floral Planter
This charming plant pot has a vintage floral design that will bring nostalgia to any outdoor space. It’s equipped with a drainage hole to support healthy plant growth.
This 4-pack of barrel planters is great for starting off a container garden. The neutral color allows the plants to do all the talking, while the barrel design provides some rustic charm.
Simple but timeless, this terracotta planter is sturdy and durable for long-lasting use. It’s made from recycled materials and can easily be drilled into to add a drainage hole.