Creating a gorgeous and growing-well garden that does not require much of your time and effort is all about designing a low-maintenance outdoor plant layout. It is all about making informed decisions early on about what you want your design to be, what plants should be chosen and which structure should be applied as the basis. This is the way that will leave you free to play in the nature and not working on it.
Contents
The following is an in-depth review of how to make a low maintenance outdoor plant design:
1. Adopt The Ideals Of Smart Design
The first step of a design establishes low maintenance garden. A sensible preparer may only intensely decrease maintenance in future.
- Keep Edit Simple: Complicated plans that have heavy and complex body curves and a lot of small split beds usually normally demand extra edging, weeding and special care. Choose simple lines, simple geometry and larger flowing beds. Wider, thick plantings are more sustainable than scattered and very thin planting.
- Decrease or get rid of Lawn: By far the most maintenance-intensive elements of a garden are lawns. They require regular watering, mowing, fertilizing at seasons and even pest/ disease control is necessitated. Craft redesigning of large lawn space by incorporating hardscaping (patios, gravel paths) or those that are planted to be densely filled with low-maintenance groundcovers, perennials or shrubs. Putting less focus on the lawn can already bring huge changes.
- Zone Your Plants: Put plants that have the same light, water, and soil requirements in one area. This brings about an efficient irrigation and a situation free of such prevailing issues such as over or under watering of particular plants. An example would be to establish a section where drought tolerant plants go, the zone beyond which is a section that needs to be moist enough on a regular basis. Also, fertilization is made easy.
- Asking about Scale and Mature Size: Look up what the mature size of the plants you plan to plant will be (how big they grow, height and spread). Choose varieties that would take care of themselves without you having to always cut them in order to ensure that they stay in place. To minimize even further the future maintenance, choose slow-growing species where available.
- Layout Water Flow: Take note of the water movements in your landscaped area particularly in time of rain. Make your planting beds in such a way that rain water runs down to them attractively. You may want to implement such things as rain gardens on places where water would usually gather in, in order to have plants naturally absorb the water. This limits the occurrence of supplemental irrigation.
2. Strategic Selection of Plants
The most important thing in a low-maintenance garden is selecting the suitable plants. They must be familiar with your local weather condition and not too much maintenance would be necessary after initial planting.
- Drought-Tolerant Plants (Xeriscape Plants): This means that they are your best friends when it comes to locations where it is likely to experience dry spell or water conservation is a major point of concern. They are naturally shaped to survive with little water such as waxy leaves or thick roots, or ablility to store water enabling them to get established with small amount of water.
- Succulents: Nature has created these with desert habitats and they are great when there is arid condition, and they do not need much water.
- Cacti: Like succulents they are great when arid condition exists, but they also do not need much water.
- Ornamental Grasses: Provide texture, movement and are in general enormously hardy, disease resistant and low water.
- Mediterranean-Style Plants: There are numerous lovely, aromatic and very drought-resistant herbs such as Lavender, Rosemary, and Thyme that can be used.
- Local Adaptation: Make sure to plant those which are proven to grow there in your particular area. This implies that they are already acclimatized to types of soil, normal temperatures, and the rainfall patterns. Contact the local botanic gardens or nurseries, or the extension office of a nearby university, and request planting lists of plants that are recommended and easily maintained in your location.
- Evergreen plants: These plants will hold on to their leaves throughout the year giving you a source of constant visual interest and there is a hugely reduced leaf litter, i.e. less raking and cleaning. Most of the shrubs and trees that are evergreen also lack much need of water.
- Groundcovers: Filling planting can comprise of groundcovers; this is a great solution to weeds. They cover the bare soil to form a living mulch which outcompetes the weeds heavily reducing the need to manually weed the plants.
- Avoid High-Maintenance Plants: Avoid plants that are well known to be thirsty and the ones that need frequent dead head, elaborate pruning, heavy feeding, the ones very prone to garden pests and diseases to climate in your area. This can involve several old fashioned annual bedding plants, or more exotic plants that are not really suited to the conditions within your climate.
3. Intelligent Hardscaping Decisions
Features that can also be created out of hardscaping, such as patios and paths, as well as retaining walls, minimize the amount of actual planting so this also has a direct and positive impact on the job demands that your garden may have as a whole.
- Paved Surfaces: Stone, concrete, and brick patios and pathways that are paved, or permeable pavers will cut down on weeding and maintenance greatly compared to planted areas. Select permeable ones to enable the rainwater seep into the soil to nourish plants in the immediate vicinity.
- Gravel Paths and Beds: Crushed gravel (be sure that it is NOT pea gravel which in turn may be easily shaky and may scatter) is very using and attractive, and needs minimal maintenance as a pathway and even planting beds. It is very effective repelling weeds and has very good draught. Gravel should always be laid on top of a good landscape fabric or weed membrane to further smother weeds.
- Composite Decking: In case you intend to have deckings, it is better to use composite materials as opposed to natural timber. Composite decking is manufactured out of repurposed plastics and wood particles and, therefore, needs little preparation such as staining or sealing unlike wood which is subject to a lot of regular maintenance.
- Large Pots/ Planters: As much as the plants in pots may need watering, the large size of the pots makes the plants take longer time to dry than those in small pots and thus the frequency of watering can be decreased. Think about self-watering pots there is a reservoir at the bottom of the pot and the plant gets its moisture all the time because of the less regular hand watering instructions.
4. Mulching and Comprehensive Soil Preparation
Healthy and well-prepared soil is the backbone of low-Maintenance Garden. Spending time here will save you times on your life later.
- Enhancing Soil Quality: Prior to the planting of the plants, then you should enrich the existing soil with organic matter such as well-rotted compost or aged manure.
- With fresh garden beds, add a 2-3-inch thick bed of compost to the site and invert it as deeply into the top 6-8 inches of the ground as possible.
- In established beds, apply 1 to 2 inches of compost per year either as a top-dressing or as a light topworking.
- Organic matter gives the soil an enormous benefit: it improves drainage of heavy clay soils and raises water retention of fast-draining sandy soils. It also has a sustained, gradual release of vital nutrients so there is less requirement for artificial fertilisers.
- Mulch, Mulch! Water the newly planted material, then once it appears to have dried out, place a thick (2 or 4 inches) cover of organic mulch (e.g., wood chips, shredded bark, leaf mold, straw) around your plants.
- Important Advantages of Mulch:
- Root Protection: Mulch prevents and/or inhibits growth of weeds because they have no access to the sunlight hence their germination and growth is affected tremendously.
- Moisture Retention: Like a blanket, it resists water evaporation in the soil hence you will require to water less often.
- Temperatures: Mulch protects the soil to keep roots less cold or less hot during extreme conditions, making the plants feel less stressed out.
- Enhancement of soil: Another way that organic mulches benefit the health of soil is that organic mulches are broken down over time, during this process they add back much needed organic matter and nutrients, not only does this benefit the soil but it also makes it healthier in the process.
- Mulch should never be in direct contact with any plant stems or tree trunks, because that will cause excess moisture and hence rot or disease.
- Important Advantages of Mulch:
5. Effective Systems of Irrigation
Gardens that did not require a lot of maintenance will require some water, in particular during the time of establishment, and in cases of extended dry spells. Efficient and effective watering is the aim.
- Drip Irrigation: This is the best watering method of a landscape by far. It puts water in thin streams to the root zone of the plant in a limited space, making minimum evaporation, run-off or overspray. You can put it on easy automation with timers so that your plants receive the water when they need them and without any shifting of hands.
- Place Plants With Like Water Needs Together: Another way to reinforce the zoning of your plants is to allow different water needs to be on separate irrigation zones. This will not only eliminate overwatering of drought-tolerant species but will also mean dryer plants receive sufficient moisture and water use is maximized.
- Deep and infrequent Watering: When watering, go deep and water well. This helps plants to nurture extensive roots, which increases their toughness and reduces the plant to be prone to drought during dry seasons. Watering regularly and lightly in the other hand encourages the development of roots that are near the surface and therefore the plants start to rely on the consistent supply of moisture at the surface.
- Self Watering Pots: When using containers, self watering pots that includes the water reservoir inside the container will greatly diminish the frequency in which you manually need to water the plant, thus keeping the plant with a steady supply of water.
6. Intelligent Maintenance Plans
Low-maintenance does not translate to a lack of maintenance, though low-maintenance is designed to minimize the work. Rather, it implies more intelligent, less frequent, more efficient maintenance.
- Dense Planting: Fit your beds with most plants so that nothing or merely a small space of bare soil is seen. This type of living mulch treatment can be used to kill off weeds and provide an overgrown look that is more pleasing and does not need as much manual weed killing.
- Weed Proactively: get weeds before they grow big. This is usually the most simple method of hand-pulling it out after it has been rained on or irrigated (when the soil is soft). This will also help to prevent a lot of disturbance to the soil which tends to activate sleeping weed seeds.
- Chop-and-Drop Mulching: Using plants that are appropriate (e.g., plants cut in the fall such as perennials), rather than composting spent foliage or thoroughly pruning clippings, chop them coarsely and put them on the ground surface as a mulch. This brings beneficial nutrients and organic matter back into the ground, which replicates natural processes that happen in the forest floor.
- Plan to have natural form: It is best to choose plants which need minimal maintenance to assume a suitable form and shape and size, with less frequent, complex pruning or sheanging. When pruning must be performed this should be done through suitable methods (the right methods on pruning have already been discussed in the proceeding discussion on pruning) to favor proper growth and to make the plant retain its natural beauty.
- Infrequent Check-ins: Frequently visit your garden to check and see any emerging problems as early as possible, to prevent them becoming big problems down the line that end up drastic to fix (e.g., check your garden once per week or every fortnight).
Considerately applying these design characteristics, along with wise plant choices, intelligent hardscaping, conscientious soil conditioning, effective watering and active maintenance, you will be able to develop an attractive and successful outdoor planting scheme which will not require too much of your time so that you can genuinely enjoy your green area.
