Modern Garden Accent Ideas

Modern Shapes

• Modern garden accents, whether they are flower pots, birdhouses or picnic tables, focus on lines and shapes, particularly clean, sharp lines and geometric shapes, such as rectangles, circles and triangles. For example, instead of placing a typical picnic table in your yard, choose one with interesting wavy patterns for the tabletop boards. Instead of choosing a flower pot or fountain with an intricate, fussy design, choose one with straight sides and no decoration.

Modern Materials

• Salvaged wood and scrap metal, concrete, durable plastic and bright paint all play important roles in modern accents. Discarded barbecue bowls become garden planters when painted bright Mediterranean blue or orange. Steel plow discs become birdbaths when welded to metal pipes. Give any garden accent a new coat of paint in a bright color for an instant update. Popular modern colors include purple, red, pink, yellow and blue.

Large Accents

• Updating large garden accents quickly modernizes your space. Replace bark mulch with beach pebbles or colored beach stone, add a backyard cabana with clean lines and gauzy drapes or an outdoor shower made from recycled wood or metal sheeting. Modern garden fences serve as design accents and borders. Try salvaged or galvanized steel, horizontal boards or gabion walls, which are wire grids filled with stones or branches. Or paint your fence in the newest fencing color -- black.

Plant Accents

• In modern gardens, plants not only form the landscape, they serve as accents in and of themselves.Topping the list of garden accent plants are succulents used in any and all ways you can imagine, growing in containers built into garden tables, hanging on the wall in mesh frames and adorning the top of birdhouses. Ornamental grasses follow right behind succulents, used as dramatic accent plants in large containers or growing in the ground.