In any other area of life, maintenance can be a dreary and dull event, but gardening is different. Part of the fun is looking after the space and maintaining the greenery, nurturing a tranquil, serene, and colourful environment.
Still, for one reason or another, not everybody can meet these demands. Some are simply time-poor, having too many professional and domestic responsibilities to take care of before they can regularly look after the garden. Others can enjoy what a garden offers but aren’t necessarily fans of the work involved. Either circumstance is fair.
That said, nobody should be deprived of a lovely garden space if there are hearts set on one. Fortunately, there is such a thing as a low-maintenance garden, and your decisions can affect how much work is involved later.
So, how can you ensure that your garden is low maintenance? Find some of the answers to this question below.
Invest in Useful Tools
Some homeowners can feel alone in their garden responsibilities. While one could always hire a professional service, this just makes the bothersome maintenance routines carry a heftier price tag. Still, the right tools can drastically reduce your workload in the right context. Nationwide have 30 years experience developing awnings for the masses, creating innovative iterations of these installations. Because of this, their awnings have nifty upgrades, such as self-cleaning technologies, so the product can almost take care of itself. They can also be remotely operated, retracting and extending at the press of a button, which can help with cleaning.
You could also use a sprinkler system to keep your greenery hydrated and lush. The system can operate on a timer, which means you don’t need to waste yours patrolling your garden to ensure everything is in order.
Purchase Hardwood Garden Furniture
Garden furniture is often exposed to the elements. The wrong materials can quickly become weather-beaten, so investing in the most durable offerings is important. Such garden furniture is typically made of hardwoods like roble, eucalyptus, iroko, and cumaru, to name a few. Each material features natural oils at very high levels, which improves their resistance to harsher weather conditions. If your chairs and tables are made from the stuff, you’ll spend far less time having to maintain and repair them through the years.
Hardwood is more resistant than softwood, but it can still be a good idea to apply a few coats or covers to further protect these purchases. Of course, the shelter that awnings provide should also help preserve your garden furniture.
Replace the Lawn
Lawns can be a lot to deal with. While they have many advantages for you and the creatures in the ecosystem, they require their share of maintenance to be especially smart, lush, and green. Therefore, it could be a good idea to replace the lawn. Surprisingly, as many as one in ten homeowners have replaced their gardens with artificial lawns, no doubt at least partly inspired by the desire to reduce maintenance aggro. Gravel and decking are suitable candidates for the switch too.
There can be a worry that making moves like this can take something away from your outdoor spaces. Whether you’re worried you’ll lose natural charm or create an environment that seems more fake, flat, and two-dimensional, all will be well if you add to these choices and decorate around them. Lawn substitutes can be appealing aesthetics on their own terms, but it’s always worth fleshing them out with lights, bunting, or flowers.
Plant Low Maintenance Plants
Keeping up with lots of greenery can almost be exhausting to think about on its own terms. Pacing up and down the garden and excessively pruning and deadheading flowers on the weekend or Sunday afternoon isn’t always ideal. Instead, try to look for plants that are low maintenance and require much less care than others. Try to pay attention to the seasonal options too. Low maintenance winter plants include evergreens, hellebores, persicaria, and sedum. You may need to switch out your selection as the season’s change, but not many other demanding tasks will be asked of you otherwise.
Maintain the health of your plants by purchasing viable honey bees and allowing them to thrive in your garden. Bees contribute to the growth of numerous fruits, vegetables, nuts, and herbs, whose reproduction and yield depend on pollinators. Through digging and foraging, honey bees can help control pests and improve the health of the soil. They can also produce valuable goods like honey and wax that can be used in your garden or for personal use.
Limiting yourself to planting only a handful of low maintenance plants with similar caring needs is a good idea. That way, you can establish a quick routine for what little work you may need to do. Furthermore, some photinia, hornbeam, and box hedging can be slower to grow than others, so doing research around those can also reduce the need for constant trimming. If you like growing your food but don’t want to oversee an elaborate greenhouse arrangement, beans, squashes, peas, radishes, and courgettes don’t need anything other than an occasional splash of water. Maintenance is minuscule!
Conclusion
There are low maintenance options for garden care. Combining them all together, you should be able to enjoy a garden space with less interruption, toil, and stress. Instead, you’ll have a humble outdoor retreat that can still be rather sophisticated if you’ve invested in the right tools and equipment. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!
