You may have heard of color drenching, a popular design trend that uses a single color on a room’s walls, trim, and furnishings to make the space look tidier, larger, and calmer. A plant-centric spin on this idea is green drenching, which uses lots of leafy greenery to create a beautiful, restful space. Get expert insight into how you can try this trend yourself to make a lush, calming design statement in your garden or home.
- Georgia Clay is the plant selection manager at the Monrovia plant company.
- Katie Tamony is the chief marketing officer at the Monrovia plant company.
What Is Green Drenching?
Green drenching mixes color drenching with forest bathing, a Japanese practice of relaxation that finds calm and quiet in connecting with nature.
“There’s something restorative about being in nature,” says Katie Tamony of Monrovia plant company. “All that green calms you.”
Green drenching blankets a space in many shades of green via plants to create a place where you can get an instant mental reset. Layering lots of foliage plants creates a calm space that summons nature’s restorative powers. You can green-drench patio walls, backyard fences, indoor walls, and arbors.
Green Drenching Ideas
Green-drenching can make a big impact in a small space. Here are some ways to use plants to green-drench your living spaces, indoors and out.
1. Create a Living Fence
Instead of erecting a wooden fence or brick wall to shield your outdoor space from the prying eyes of neighbors, create vertical walls with plants.
“Living fences create privacy while adding a soothing touch of nature,” says Georgia Clay, plant selections manager at Monrovia. “Leaves are better than a privacy fence. What better place to start green-drenching than a foundation of evergreen shrubs?”
To green-drench a living wall, layer foliage plants of different heights with different leaf textures and different shades of green.
Clay suggests planting a row of evergreens like ‘Dragon Prince’ Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) along your property line. This compact conifer grows to 3 feet tall and has a round shape and feathery foliage that mixes well with larger-leafed plants.
Mix it with taller evergreens like ‘Gold Coast’ pittosporum (Pittosporum tenuifolium), which reaches 10 feet tall and 8 feet wide and features glowing lime-green variegated leaves for a striking bit of green-drenching. ‘Emerald Colonnade’ holly (Ilex spp.) is another tall choice for a green-drenched living hedge, reaching 12 feet tall.
No yard? Grow compact evergreens in trough-shaped planters to create a potted living hedge along the side of a courtyard or balcony. “They can make a small space feel contained and private,” Clay says.
2. Train a Vine
Vines make a good base for a green-drenched space. They’re relatively fast-growing, and you can get them to scramble up a wall or a trellis to create a wash of calming, living green in a space. You can also train them to grow overhead on an arbor, creating a green-drenched ceiling for an outdoor room.
Vines are a good pick for smaller spaces where you want layers of green but might not have room for a row of shrubs or large tropical plants in containers.
“We’re seeing a real increase in interest in all kinds of vines,” Clay says. She likes jasmine vines because they have fragrant blooms along with the green leaves. ‘Madison’ star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) is a cold-hardy variety that can grow down to Hardiness Zone 7 and has white blooms that smell like orange blossoms.
Vines like clematis and mandevilla also work well in a green-drenched space. ‘Evergreen’ clematis (Clematis armandi) has leathery, deep green leaves that bring color and texture to a green-drenched outdoor area.
While green drenching is focused on layering foliage, not flowers, introducing blooms to a green-drenched space is on trend, Clay says. “The aroma of blooms adds a sense of wellbeing, and that’s one of the elements of green drenching.”
A single color doesn’t equal monotony. When green drenching a space, mix different hues of leaf colors, from chartreuse to olive green, and use a variety of leaf textures to keep the scene lively.
3. Hang Plants
Green-drench a small space with hanging plants suspended from the ceiling of a deck, patio, or indoor room.
Good plants to use include:
Use hook screws, J-hooks, and S-hooks to suspend the plants from a ceiling joist that can handle the weight. Use different-sized baskets and suspend the plants at different heights to add variety to your blanket of green. Choose variegated varieties of plants to inject splashes of yellow-green and white as accents.
4. Set Up a Houseplant Feature Wall
Turn a wall into a living wall of houseplants by mounting pots on walls or filling wall-mounted shelves with trailing or hanging plants. Position plants so there are plants from floor to ceiling. Put some plants in oversized containers on the floor in front of plants on the wall. Choose plants that trail and plants that grow tall. The key to successful green drenching is mixing leaf colors, textures, and plant shapes.
Good foliage plants for a houseplant feature wall include:
Hydroponic growing systems are another way to green-drench a space. They’ll create a wall of green, and they often come with their own grow lamp.
5. Plant an Eden
Don’t just embrace the green color; embrace the green concept. Green, of course, connotes earth-friendly living that supports wellness in us and the planet. Plant a productive space that attracts bees, butterflies, and other pollinators and includes edible plants as well as ornamentals.
Pair blue hydrangeas with blueberries to create a pretty, edible hedge, or mix strawberries with red zinnias to maximize space, mix food and flowers, and create a design that packs a powerful punch of two monochromatic color schemes, green leaves plus fruits and flowers in the same color. This is known in the design world as double drenching, where you blanket a space in two colors, not just one.
Clay recommends pairing ‘Seaside Serenade’ Crystal Cove hydrangeas that produce blooms that are pink to purple-blue, depending on soil conditions, with ‘Bountiful’ Belle blueberry bushes that produce blueberries on pink stems. Another double-drench combo to try is ‘Eversweet’ strawberry tucked in front of ‘Double Scoop’ Raspberry Deluxe coneflower—red berries paired with raspberry red flowers.
Juxtapose the double-drenched landscape with foliage plants to add a green-drenched backdrop. Your goal is a small ecosystem of plants that creates your own private garden of Eden.
“When you come home, you want a feeling of going on a little mini escape,” Tamony says. Green drenching can deliver just that. Think of this trend as self-care with leaves.
