We all love the idea of a gorgeous garden, teeming with plants and flowers, maybe even with a vegetable patch. However, the idea and the reality of this type of garden are quite different!
Looking after a garden isn’t an easy job; it takes constant care and attention, and for a lot of us, it just isn’t possible to carve out the time in between working, caring for the kids, and actually having a little bit of time to relax.
If you design your garden so that it is low maintenance, you can have a beautiful outdoor space to enjoy that takes considerably less work. Let’s take a look at some ways to keep your garden low maintenance.
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Limit how many different types of plants you have
Limiting the number of different species of plants you have has a couple of benefits when you’re aiming to create a low maintenance garden. Firstly, it makes it much easier to tell which is a plant and which is a weed! Anything that isn’t one of your chosen plant species is probably a weed and can therefore be disposed of.
Secondly, it means that you only need to learn how to take care of a few species of plants, which is much easier than trying to keep track of hundreds!
Reduce or remove your lawn
Lawns take a huge amount of maintenance. Between mowing them, keeping them watered, and removing moss and weeds, it’s something that can become a headache. This is particularly true if your lawn is large.
If you want to make your garden low maintenance, consider replacing your lawn with gravel, or alternatively, you could reduce the lawn’s size and convert some of it into Patios or decking. This also has the added bonus of giving you a nice level space on which to put outdoor seating or sun loungers.
Borders
One job that never seems to end when you’re gardening is weeding! So if you want to create a low maintenance garden, it makes sense to find a way to stop as many weeds from growing.
According to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), replacing your perennials with shrubs means that you can line your borders with a weed-suppressing membrane, through which shrubs can grow. You can lay mulch or chippings on top of the membrane. It’s unlikely that weed spores will take hold in the mulch, and after beds are established, they probably won’t require much watering, either.
Another great thing about replacing perennials with shrubs is that there won’t be so much work required to trim them back, as shrubs are pretty adept at managing themselves.
Watering
Finally, for a truly low maintenance garden, you can’t go wrong with automatic sprinklers! These sprinklers will do the job of keeping your plants hydrated so that all you will need to do is relax and enjoy your garden.
Just be sure to check in on your plants every now and then to ensure that they are all getting the water they need. It can take a few tries to get your sprinklers lined up in the right places.
