The Best Plants for Modern Meadow Container Gardens
One of this year’s hottest garden design trends is the Modern Meadow—a breezy, natural style that combines ornamental grasses and pollinator-friendly flowers, evoking the look of a sprawling meadow but adapted for the home garden.
While often seen in large-scale landscapes, this aesthetic can be applied to container gardens, bringing a sense of wild elegance to patios, balconies, and entryways!
Combine airy grasses, vibrant blooms, and lush foliage to create a container display that captures the essence of a meadow—right in your own outdoor space.
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How to Achieve a Modern Meadow Look in Containers
To bring this look to life in a container garden, choose plants that offer different heights, textures, and colors. You can keep it simple with just three elements per pot:
🌾 Grass — for height, movement, and softness.
🌸 Flower — to add pops of color and attract pollinators.
🍃 Foliage — to ground the arrangement and add saturated color.
Formula for a Modern Meadow Container GardeN
Grass + Flower + Foliage
Favorite Grasses for Modern Meadow Containers
Grasses form the backbone of this look, adding height, movement, and a light, airy feel. These selections thrive in containers and the perennial varieties can be transferred to the landscape at the end of their season:
‘Adagio’ Maiden Grass. A tall, graceful, finely-textured perennial that works well in large pots.
‘Little Bunny’ Dwarf Fountain Grass. A compact perennial with soft, arching plumes perfect for small planters.
‘Morning Light’ Maiden Grass. Subtle variegation in the arching blades adds brightness and contrast against darker, broader leaves and flowers, making this perennial a great choice for mixed containers.
Ornamental Millet. An eye-catching annual with broad blades and tall, chocolate brown flower spikes.
Prairie Winds® 'Desert Plains' Fountain Grass. A perennial that starts out green and develops warm, golden tones in fall. Young plants are ideal for standalone containers or window boxes.
Purple Fountain Grass. A striking annual with deep red foliage and plumes that sway beautifully in the wind.
Quick tip: Not enough room for a tall grass in your container garden? Insert a cluster of cut branches like Curly Willow, or dried plumes of Pampass Grass, to create height without consuming valuable space for roots.
Best Flowers for a Modern Meadow Look in Containers
To complement these grasses, incorporate flowers that provide seasonal color while supporting pollinators like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. The selections below offer both beauty and ecological benefits to container gardens.
Angelonia. This popular Summer annual has an upright habit and spires of flowers in white, pink, or purple.
Butterfly Candy™ Buddleia. This compact butterfly bush is a woody perennial available in shades of pink, purple, and white. Please take caution when selecting a Buddleia—choose sterile or seedless varieties to prevent unwanted spreading, as it can be invasive in some areas. Butterfly Candy has been bred to produce few to no seeds.
Pollinator Magnet
Include a compact Buddleia, such as Butterfly Candy™, for spires of flowers in container gardens that will feed pollinators all season long!
Echinacea. Commonly called Coneflower, this long-blooming, drought-tolerant perennial comes in a variety of colors.
Gaura. Delicate, fluttering blooms on slender stems create a whimsical effect from this perennial. For a similar silhouette with larger blooms, try Japanese Anemone.
Meadow Flowers for Container Gardens
Left to right: Cinnamon SuperCal® Petunias, ‘Jasoda Purple’ Belgian Mums®, ‘Belleza® Dark Pink’ Gaura, and ‘Powwow White’ Coneflower.
Portulaca. A drought-tolerant, trailing bloomer perfect for adding a cascading element to Summer containers. Vibrant color options include shades of orange, yellow, hot pink, red, and white.
Salvia. A vibrant annual with spikes of flowers in rich purples and blues that bloom continuously all Summer.
Scabiosa. This long-blooming perennial has pin-cushion shaped flowers that emerge from a dense mound of blue-green foliage.
Quick tip: For a cohesive design, repeat textures and colors in large planters—especially in window boxes, where a rhythmic planting pattern can mimic the sweeping beauty of a meadow.
Favorite Foliage for Depth in Containers
Plants with lush, broad leaves will help ground the arrangement, adding depth and a backdrop for thin blades of grass and colorful flowers. While rich green leaves are an obvious choice, I also encourage you to try plants with more colorful foliage in your containers:
Autumn Brilliance Fern. Semi-evergreen fern with a feathery texture. New growth in Spring emerges bronze before maturing to vibrant green.
Coleus. A tender annual prized for its vibrant foliage in solid and variegated varieties. The range of colors includes plum, burnt orange, burgundy, red, and chartreuse.
Heuchera. Also known as Coral Bells, this low-growing perennial comes in a wide array of colors, including purple, red, bronze, pink, and chartreuse.
Leucothoe ‘Rainbow’. This slow-growing, deer-resistant, evergreen shrub offers multi-colored foliage of red, green, and creamy white. (See the middle window box below!)
Sedum. A resilient perennial with plump, succulent-like leaves for structure, plus seed-like flower heads for texture and color. Upright and trailing varieties are fantastic additions to containers!
Bringing It All Together
To enhance the Modern Meadow feel, consider using stone or heavily textured planters that mimic natural landscapes. A well-placed teak bench beside a grouping of mixed containers can further reinforce the relaxed, organic aesthetic. Tap any image below to shop this look.
For more inspiration on this and other trends in container gardening, check out Top 10 Container Gardening Trends to Try in 2025. It’s exciting to see how the Modern Meadow style fits into the broader movement toward nature-inspired, low-maintenance designs.
Happy planting!
Steph
PS: To compare this year’s container gardening trends with 2024, check out last year’s trends roundup.
