So, you want a low maintenance garden. Here are some garden design and landscaping ideas to achieve this:
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Less lawn or no lawn, more hard surfaces – paving/decking/gravel. Larger areas of hard landscape need not look uniform and tedious – try combinations of paving and gravel, deck and pebbles or sleepers and gravel. |
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A pebble fountain rather than a pond to provide the sight and sound and sound of water without much work. |
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How about a wild flower and meadow grass area instead of a lawn – looks good and only needs cutting twice a year. |
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Get an automatic watering system – need not cost the earth and will cope with watering when you’re away. |
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Spread a three inch layer of garden compost, chipped bark or well-rotted manure over borders and beds to suppress weeds and conserve moisture. Alternatively use gravel and pebbles laid over a layer of permeable landscape fabric. |
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Build some raised beds – less bending down. |
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Use ground cover plants to suppress weeds. |
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Weeding – little but often is the rule (say once a week or as you wander round the garden) rather than a three hour blitz once a month. |
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Employ a landscaping firm or jobbing gardener to carry out routine maintenance and heavier tasks. |
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Stock your garden with easy care plants. The ideal labour saving plant is disease and pest resistant, does not need regular pruning, tolerates drought, does not require staking and is fully frost hardy. |
