Chloe Hurst dons a black veil to keep the bugs out of her eyes while planting flowers that would be at home in a Tim Burton film: black hero tulips, New York Night hellebores and black mamba petunias.
She sees her garden as a reflection of herself. “I’m a Scorpio, so I’ve always been spooky,” said Ms. Hurst, a 29-year-old graphic designer. She said she began reconnecting with her earlier emo days through landscaping after purchasing her home in Ottawa, Canada, six years ago.
Many of her plants are dark red or purple. Ms. Hurst also has a potted vegetable garden with the darkest varieties of eggplants, bell peppers and not-so-green beans.
Between Billie Eilish’s jet-black locks to the success of “Wednesday” on Netflix and the forthcoming “Beetlejuice” sequel in September, all things gothic are in the air — and in the ground. Searches for “goth garden” nearly doubled on Google this month from last, and the marketing firm Garden Media Group clocked “goth gardening” as a trend in its 2024 trends report. On TikTok, gardeners like Ms. Hurst rack up hundreds of thousands of likes when sharing their goth gardens and offering tips on how to grow one.
Over the last few years, so-called gothic seeds have appeared to become more popular, too. In 2018, Ed Hume Seeds introduced a gothic vegetable packet with spiky artichokes and bull’s blood beet that remains a top seller, according to the company. Hudson Valley Seed Company, which began selling a goth flower mix with Dracula celosia and black knight scabiosa in 2020, said they had noticed an increase in sales of the productthis year.
