Lots of clients ask for a low maintenance garden. It seems to be the holy grail of garden design. But what does low maintenance mean? How does it impact your experience of the garden? Is it achievable?
When asked to design a garden with very little plants and just a lawn to make it low maintenance I raised an eyebrow. The living element of a garden is the part that draws you into a space and more. Did you know that when you garden you are helping your mental physical health? There is nothing more mindful than weeding, growing plants from seeds, touching the soil. As human beings we need the connection to our natural habitat and having a garden is a huge privilege to allow you to connect to nature. So many benefits have been seen that the NHS now prescribes gardening to improve mental health.
Pottering about in the garden helps your physical health too. You can work quite hard and get a sweat on while you are in the garden. There are microbiomes in soil that are good for us and we need to be touching them and breathing them to get a great affect.
So while you may want a low maintenance garden I don’t believe we should have a no maintenance garden. This effectively is just a car park!
So what to consider with your garden to help with the maintenance levels:
- Watering
- This is getting more important as climate change heats up our gardens. Do you want to be watering every day? How often?
- Pots – anything in a pot is going to need more TLC. Put as much in the ground as possible.
- Type of plant – Go for drought tolerant planting. Think of the Mediterranean!
- Mulches – Keep the water in the ground from absorbing off.
- How will you water? Consider if you want to put a irrigation system in.
- Plant Maintenance
- Weeding – the less bare earth you have the less opportunity they have to grow. Make sure your borders have a mulch and are planted up.
- Feeding – If you put a good layer of compost on your beds once a year then you shouldn’t need to feed but check when you buy a plant.
- Type of plant. Annuals (flowers that live for one season) are great for colour but high maintenance. They need to be watered well and then replacing annually.
- Lawn Care
- Honestly lawns are not low maintenance so consider do you actually want a lawn.
Garden pottering is good for my soul and I have found it has a great affect on my mental health. So consider the balance of maintenance and health benefits when you design your garden.