James
A great-looking yard can become a second job in no time. The grass needs to be mowed, the beds need to be weeded, the plants need to be watered, and any inappropriate plant in the yard needs constant attention just to survive.
But low maintenance doesn’t necessarily mean that your yard is going to become a gravel-covered empty plot. Low maintenance landscape can still have color, texture, a lawn and even some produce-generating areas. The only thing that changes in the latter is the choice of plants according to the current conditions rather than forcing the whole landscape to fit whatever looks good in the garden center.
Start with the Appropriate Grass Seed
If you still want to have a lawn in your yard, then the choice of grass should come first. Different types of lawns require different types of grass. A lawn that will be used by kids and/or pets should have a different grass seed than the purely decorative lawn that receives almost no footsteps. Matching the climate, the availability of sun, and the use of the lawn gives you better chances than repeatedly correcting an incorrectly picked type.
It might also be true that you don’t always need a lawn in your yard. It will be better to keep the lawn in play areas, frequently walked sections, or open spaces that you really enjoy and remove grass from the awkward strips, steep slopes, and hard-to-mow areas.
Use Ground Covers Instead of Grass in Hard-to-Maintain Areas
Sometimes the constant failure of the grass indicates that the location isn’t good for it.
It would be better to use the ground covers. They are quite good beneath the trees, along the slopes, on both sides of the pathways, and in irregular areas where you find it annoying to work with a lawn mower. Once established, the ground covers can make the landscape beautiful, cover the soil and reduce the number of weeds.
The important thing is appropriateness. A ground cover that fits the sunny and dry location might struggle in the shade, and another one might grow too fast in your yard. It is necessary to know about the mature spread, the light requirement, the soil condition, and the status of being invasive or not before planting.
Planting a sufficient number of plants will give you a good result faster than scattered ones.
Use Perennials and Shrubs as the Structural Plants
Annual flowers make your yard bright, but constantly replacing them becomes the thing that you are trying to avoid by building a low maintenance landscape. The perennials, the ornamental grass, and the shrubs will give you the structural part of the yard that won’t require replacement every spring.
It is possible to think in layers. The shrubs will establish the basic shape of your beds, the ornamental grass will add height and movement to the beds, and the groups of the perennials will provide your beds with the seasonal colors. Repeat the plants several times in order to give a more calm look to your yard than using one of each species.
The native or well-adapted plants will be a good choice as they will require much less maintenance than inappropriate plants that will constantly require your attention. Also, the size is an important point. The small shrubs can seem harmless in the nursery and become the constant pruning projects when planted next to the pathway. It will be better to give a place to a plant instead of planning the landscape according to the plant of the planting day.
Make the Vegetable Garden Small Enough to Enjoy
Growing food in your yard can be a good experience, but a large vegetable garden is hardly maintenance-free. If your main goal is an attractive yard that doesn’t require all your weekends, it would be better to make a manageable vegetable garden instead of creating the largest possible one.
Choose the vegetables that your family really likes. Looking at the list of vegetable seeds for planting will allow you to reduce the size of your garden according to your desires and plant favorite vegetables instead of filling all the beds. A small garden of vegetables that you like can bring you more pleasure than a huge garden of vegetables that nobody really wants to eat.
Also, it will be better to put the vegetables that are frequently harvested in a convenient location rather than in the farthest part of the yard. A good sun and convenient watering will eliminate much of the effort.
Fill the Gaps before Weeds Do
Gaps between the plants can look neat after you have just landscaped your yard, but they will attract weeds. One of the methods of reducing the future effort is the planning of beds in accordance with their future look.
Mulch can be helpful in the process of maturing of your plants. It will reduce the number of exposed soil, help with the moisture retaining and even with the weed suppressing, but it will still require maintenance. As the appropriate ground covers and large plants will mature, they will occupy more of the empty space.
This is one more reason to resist purchasing individual plants. A number of separate shrubs covered by the large area of the mulch will require more weeding than the intentional groups of the plants.
It would be better to create zones of the plants that require the same watering. Instead of the thirsty plant surrounded by the drought-tolerant ones, create the zones with similar requirements.
Plant for the Future Landscape
A low maintenance landscape requires more thinking at the stage of the planting precisely because you don’t want to maintain anything later. You should think about mature height and width, the roots, shade, the seasonal appearance, and proximity to the buildings, fences, pathways, and the utilities.
The tree that was planted in the right place will provide shade in the future and become the structural element of your landscape with the minimum of maintenance. The wrong tree can create you years of pruning problems, crowded space, and unwanted shade. The same thing works with the shrubs and perennials.
It would be better not to choose the plants that look good in one season. Evergreen structure, foliage texture, flowering periods, and fall interest will work together and your yard won’t require constant replanting in order to stay attractive.
The most maintainable yard is the yard that doesn’t struggle against nature. Make your lawn where the lawn is useful, replace the struggling parts of the lawn with the appropriate plants, use the shrubs and perennials in order to build up the structure, and use intensive gardening only for the manageable parts of your yard that you really enjoy tending.
Your low maintenance yard will never become a yard without any maintenance, but with the right plants in the right places, your maintenance will change from rescuing the landscape to keeping an already successful one.
