9 Tips to Master Low Maintenance Gardening

9 Tips to Master Low Maintenance Gardening

Do you want all the perks of a beautifully maintained garden without having to face all the tedious, back-breaking work that’s required to grow one? Very wise!

Here are 9 great tips for mastering a low maintenance garden:

1. Choose Your Borders

Unless you want to share your garden with your neighbours you’ll need some borders, so would you rather maintain a hedge or paint and occasionally replace your fence panels?

No garden will be totally maintenance free (unless you employ a gardener, in which case be sure to go all out and ask for topiary animals!) so build your garden around the tasks you can tolerate or will have time to complete.  In the long term, a hedge may be easier and cheaper to look after.

2. Go Wild

A wild garden has real ‘British countryside’ appeal to it and it can help attract bees and butterflies to your home so don’t be afraid to let your garden grow. If you have a lawn, mow just the parts of it you use regularly and scatter wildflower seeds around the borders.

3. Gardening Tools

Gardening tools and machinery such as a garden hose are a real blessing for the gardener who’s short on time, motivation or expertise – so invest in them. Getting a good expandable garden hose from BestOfMachinery.com is a great idea for anyone who spends a lot of time gardening.

If you have a large garden or want to keep a low maintenance vegetable patch, install sprinklers or, if the scale demands it, an irrigation system. If you opt for hedge borders, petrol trimmers are a quick way to keep them tidy.

If you have a lawn you want to keep neat and tidy, it’s worth investing in a quality machine. From the push-along to the ride-on, Husqvarna mowers offer something for every garden and every budget to make lawn-care a breeze.

4. Garden Furniture

Hardwood furniture may look fantastic, but it can be expensive and often needs a lot of care and maintenance. Opt instead for aluminium or plastic resin furniture which is light, easy to store and will need nothing more than an annual wipe down with a cloth.

5. Planting

Take care when selecting which plants to include in your garden. Some grow like wildfire, some are very particular about their location and others need a lot of nurture. In other words, they’re very high maintenance so read the care labels carefully before buying.

Look instead for low maintenance and hardy growers that can thrive in sun or shade; like Geraniums, shrubs and ornamental grasses as well as herbs like Sage, Lavender and Rosemary.

6. Mulching

Scatter a layer of mulch like bark chippings, compost or manure over your borders and bedding. It will help to limit the growth of weeds, keep soil cool, retain water and provide an attractive, very low maintenance finish.

7. Slabs and Decking

Any kind of soil border or lawn will need some maintenance, so if you really can’t manage it (or simply have no desire to) then replace them with wooden decking or slabbed patio areas that will make any outdoor space easy to look after.

8. Pots and Planters

Outdoor pots and planters make incorporating herbs and plants into a garden incredibly easy. You can buy established plants that need very little care from garden centres or just as easily plant your own seeds and bulbs if you’re willing to wait for them to grow.

An advantage of pots and planters is that they can be moved to allow easy cleaning of any deck and patio areas, relocated to capitalise on sunny spots as necessary and situated in places that are easy for you to reach for annual pruning or dead-heading.

Take care to get containers that are large enough to give your plants room to grow so the need for re-potting and watering is minimised.

9. Get Help!

If anyone other than you enjoys the garden then get them involved in taking care of it!

Enlisting your children, grandchildren, friends and neighbours can make very light work of all those outdoor chores and when they’re done, you can all enjoy your garden with a well-earned Pimms and a BBQ.

Guest Article. Contains a sponsored link.