What Is Goth Gardening? And How Can You Create the Dark Aesthetic in Your Own Garden?

When you think about the gardens created by your parents or your grandparents or about the botanical gardens you've visited, you might imagine certain constants: sunny weather, blue skies, colorful flowers beloved by gardeners like Knock Out roses, dahlias, coneflowers and zinnias in a rainbow of vibrant pinks, oranges and yellows. Or perhaps you imagine shade gardens filled with hostas, ferns and elephant ears in hues of lime and emerald green.

We tend to associate gardens with bright, cheery plants and flowers and tidy, orderly rows of azalea and symmetrical stands of boxwoods because of the gardens we've grown up with.

But goth gardeners, many of whom are Gen Z and Millennials, do things a little differently.

Features of a Goth Garden

Goth gardeners bring a unique aesthetic vision to their plots, aiming to inject their taste and personalities into their garden rather than create a cookie cutter space like ones you might have seen before.

Darker Colors Delight in the Goth Garden

Instead of cheerful primary colors and the usual plant specimens, these darker gardens feature plants and flowers the color of ink, soot and blood. Deep purples, bruised reds, almost black flowers create a moodier garden and are at the dark heart of the goth garden.

Wilder, Immersive Landscapes Define the Gothscape

Inspired by an array of cultural influences including goth music and literature, cemeteries and Victorian style, goth gardens are their own vibe, often freeform and a little wild, packed with strange plants and flowers instead of featuring an orderly and symmetrical same-old-same-old landscape.

Victorian Decorative Flourishes Reign

Mix in some Victorian flourishes like wrought-iron gates, gazing balls and a reflecting pool and you have the makings of a goth garden that leans into mystery, the macabre and Mother Nature's dark side.

The Origins of the Goth Garden

Though goth gardens began to pop up on Instagram and TikTok in the 2020s, their history can be traced much further back to the plant hunters, Gothic literature and morbid obsessions that defined the 19th century.

The Age of Empire and Plant Exploration

Goth gardens are rooted in the Victorian age — named for its defining ruler Queen Victoria (1837-1901). The Victorian era was a time of British empire building and botanical exploration when plant hunters traveled to Asia and South America to source exotic new plant specimens for wealthy plant collectors and botanical gardeners back home in England. Some of our most common garden plants were "discovered" (in the sense that that's when the Brits found them) during that remarkable period of plant hunting including rhododendron, hydrangea, orchids, forsythia, asilbe, petunias and zinnias, to name just a few. Gardeners of the time were obsessed with exotic new flowers including rare orchids, tulips and ferns, the latter so coveted they set off a craze for the plants known as Pteridomania or "fern fever."

The Rise of Gothic Literature

The Victorian age was also defined by the Gothic literature of Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Bram Stoker (Dracula), Robert Louis Stevenson (Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and M. Hyde), H.G. Wells ("The Flowering of the Strange Orchid") and Edgar Allan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher). Gothic tales often dealt with the dark and mysterious side of life including ghosts, the formidable power of nature, the afterlife and a present haunted by the past — all fertile soil for the goth garden imagination.

The Victorian Cult of Death

All of these elements combined with a unique part of Victorian life: the rise of mourning rituals popularized by Queen Victoria, whose beloved husband King Albert's death in 1861 inspired a cult of death among British society. An early influencer who dictated how the British middle and upper classes lived, Victoria popularized a new form of mourning loved ones in which flower arrangements, clothing, jewelry and art work all played a role in memorializing the dead. To express her devotion to her husband, Queen Victoria even wore her black mourning dresses (special garments created so that family members could signal that they were grieving) for the rest of her life, until her own death in 1901.

In other words, the Victorian age with its obsession with exotic new plant specimens and fixation with death and the after life, was a dark, romantic, morbid, nature-obsessed time that planted a seed for today's goth gardens.

Goth Garden Plants

The plants you choose for your goth garden depend upon taste, space, your specific garden zone and whether you are creating an indoor or outdoor garden, a terrarium or moon garden. Set yourself up for success by making sure the plants you choose work in your garden zone. You can find more information about garden zones here.

Burgundies and Merlots

Shades of dark red are a bewitching part of any goth garden, evoking wine and blood and the bewitching scarlet lips and hair of a Gothic literary heroine.

Some plants to try:

• 'Dracula' Celosia
• Devil's Tobacco
• Royal Burgundy Bromeliad
• Love Lies Bleeding

Nearly Black Varieties

Truly black flowers and plants are hard to come by, and have inspired decades of scientific pursuit, as in the quest for a black tulip. The way plants absorb light via photosynthesis always leaves a trace of red or purple rather than a true deep black in plants. However many plant varieties come very, very close, such as these:

• Black Mondo Grass
• Black Bat Flower
• 'Queen of Night' Tulip
• Black Hollyhock

Deep, Dark Purples

Purple's associations with royalty and rich jewel tones make aubergine-colored plants a natural in any goth garden. They are especially striking when paired with chartreuse and silver plants.

Moody, purple plants:

• Persian Lily
• 'Black Barlow' Columbine
• 'Black Knight' Bearded Iris
• Smoke Bush

Silvery and White Plants for Contrast

Gothic plants and flowers really sing when combined with silver and white plants that contrast with their dark dimensions. And some of these silvery beauties are goth in their own right, with surprisingly strange stories behind them (Miss Willmott's Ghost), associations with death and dying (English lavender), and an ability to attract nocturnal predators (moonflower).

Ethereal, glowing plants for your goth garden:

• Miss Willmott's Ghost
• English Lavender
• Lamb's Ear
• Moonflower

Enchanting Edibles

Choose darkly hued tomatos, eggplants and lettuces for your garden beds or mix them into your ornamental garden for their whimsical forms (just be sure never to plant your edible plants near your poisonous ones).

Try these gothic veggies and herbs:

• 'Epic' Eggplant
• 'Amethyst' Bush Bean
• Red Rubin Basil
• Rosemary

Poisonous, Carnivorous and Parasitic Plants

Killer plants add a morbid touch to the goth garden, lending a sense of death and danger. Just remember that these plants are truly killers and can do great harm to children and pets, so make sure you keep vulnerable creatures far away from these baddies.

Some bad news botanicals for a goth garden:

• Deadly Nightshade
• Castor Bean
• Tropical Pitcher Plant
• Angel's Trumpet

Goth Garden Décor

Every effective goth garden is not just a visual banquet, but a sensory delight, incorporating scent, taste and sound. Goth garden décor creates a holistic story of danger and beauty and plays into the 19th century love of gardens that inspired intense feelings and emotional engagement, environments built for wandering and discovery. Use your goth garden décor to cast a spell.

Create atmosphere with these garden flourishes:

• Willow fences, trellises and obelisks
• Elaborate brass wind chimes
• Pea gravel paths that crunch underfoot
• Deep black reflecting ponds and pools
• Wrought iron fences
• Benches, gates, containers in shades of charcoal and black

Find Out More

Want to learn more about the betwitching, magical world of goth gardens? Read my book The Goth Garden: The Mystery, Beauty, and Lore of Dark Gardening.

Start your own goth garden art collection by framing artist Irina Vinnik's glorious goth garden plant and flower illustrations in The Goth Garden: Dark Blooms a collection of postcards featuring 50 of the spookiest goth garden specimens.

Can't get enough of goth gardens? A goth garden coloring book The Goth Garden: Dark Blooms Coloring Book will inspire children and adults to do a deep dive into some of the most beautiful and frightening goth garden specimens.