Topic:
Landscape Maintenance
This time of year, many of us drag out our hoses and sprinklers in an effort to keep our lawns lush and inviting, only to find ourselves mowing down the fresh growth a few days later.
This endless cycle can be exhausting, particularly in the heat of summer. Spending Saturday morning after Saturday morning on yard work can quickly feel like a hassle. Not only does lawn care eat into precious free time, but can also be wasteful in terms of water and fuel.
To avoid the waste of time and resources, consider replacing your traditional lawn with low-maintenance landscaping.
A low-maintenance yard can be achieved by replacing plants that require a lot of care and upkeep with low-maintenance plants and yard features. Below are several low-maintenance landscaping ideas that will allow you to go from working in your yard all summer long to enjoying your lawn and garden year-round.
One great way to create a cohesive, functional, low-maintenance landscape is by replacing your lawn with hardscape. Hardscaping is one of the non-living elements of your lawn and garden, and includes any number of features that are used to make a yard functional, accessible, and beautiful.
Patios are a hardscape element that can take up quite a bit of space, thus replacing a lot of lawn with a single replacement project. Made of rock, concrete, pavers, composite decking, or wood, a patio is a multi-purpose, low-maintenance addition to your yard that can only enhance its appeal.
Rather than weeding, and fertilizing your summer away, use your patio to sit and enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. Plus, upkeep on a patio is minimal, with an occasional clean-up session being all that’s necessary for years to come.
Walkways are another example of hardscape that have the potential to replace large areas of your lawn, thus getting rid of a lot of time spent on lawn maintenance. Wide or narrow, meandering or straight from point A to point B, walkways can be incorporated into your landscape design in such a way that will match your existing aesthetic. Or, if you so choose, they can help you to plan a new design style in your pursuit of a beautiful yard.
Another hardscaping feature that can replace some of your lawn is a retaining wall. Used singly or in groupings, retaining walls are an excellent way to add interesting hardscaping to your garden area. Retaining walls can be used to rid homeowners of sloping areas of lawn that result in time-consuming yard work, or can be created in conjunction with other landscaping features, such as garden beds and the aforementioned patio.
Utilizing a hardscape feature like a firepit is yet another way to cut back on high-maintenance areas of lawn that require a lot of your time and attention. By constructing a fire pit area, you’re able to include in your space a feature that allows you to relax, cook, and entertain, all while causing a major reduction in your lawn maintenance.
A firepit can be as large or as small as you’d like, and are safest when surrounded by several feet of gravel or another fire-proof material that can help to prevent the accidental spread of flames in the event of an igniting ember.
These hardscaping suggestions are not exhaustive, of course. Consider these features and others as you begin to explore options to transform your outdoor living space into a place that requires less work and brings more enjoyment.
If you are looking to lose the maintenance factor of your grassy lawn but don’t want to miss the beauty and comfort of green growing things, consider replacing your grassy areas with low-maintenance plants that don’t require mowing, watering, or fertilizing.
One excellent, low-maintenance option that’s also great for your local ecology is to select native plants for your landscaping. Native plants are well-suited for your area because they have evolved alongside the overall landscape of the place.
Able to flourish in any type of weather, native plants are often drought-tolerant because they function perfectly for their specific environment. Native grasses can be used to replace your lawn, especially if you love a natural, prairie or meadow inspired landscape design.
Or, use native blooms in your flower beds. They’re a wonderful choice when it comes to selecting low-maintenance plants.
If you want to add even more low-maintenance variety to your flower beds, consider planting perennials. Unlike annuals, which expire after a single growing season, perennial plants come back year after year, eliminating time spent planting.
Perennials typically grow in size each year, as well, and extra foliage can be a type of living mulch as the perennial ages, helping to shade the soil and keep back weeds (eliminating even more lawn and garden maintenance).
Ornamental grasses are an option to consider when researching perennials. They establish quickly and typically need only one large cut-back a year, if any maintenance at all.
In both gardens and in the lawn area, choosing ground cover plants can help to cut back on quite a bit of work around your yard, and there are a ton of low-maintenance options. If you have a shaded area in need of some greening up, mosses are wonderful additions to an outdoor living space.
Sunny areas are well-suited to many different varieties of clover, which grow to varying heights and produce blooms in several different colors.
In transition spaces, an herb such as creeping time is a nice option. It grows and spreads quickly, can handle being trampled on, and even has a scent that helps to deter pests.
The best part about all of these ground covers, though, is the fact that they require no mowing and no watering beyond their initial establishment period.
Evergreens are yet another great option when it comes to low-maintenance plants in your landscape. Often hold their shapes well as they grow, evergreens can thrive with little water, and can be used in such a way that adds color, shape, and interest to your landscape all year long.
When bringing your landscaping ideas to life in a low-maintenance way, creating garden beds and borders that play off of one another is a great way to display your personal landscaping aesthetic while consciously creating areas to plant easy-care garden beds.
Your garden beds can hold flowers, vegetables, or herbs. If set up in an efficient way from the get-go, using companion planting, composting from the start, and mulching sufficiently, any new garden beds or container gardens can be low-maintenance additions to your lawn.
When installed in the front yard, a network of beds and borders can create an area teeming with curb appeal, while also helping you to spend less time and use less water to keep your outdoor space looking and feeling wonderful.
If a bed or border full of growing things isn’t calling to you at the moment, consider installing a rock garden, with which you can really take a set-it-and-forget-it approach.
If, when reviewing your plans for a low-maintenance yard, you find yourself unable to envision a beautiful landscape that doesn’t include a traditional grassy lawn or other mid- to high-maintenance plants, consider installing an irrigation system.
Being able to water your grasses and plants at the touch of a button, and without having to drag hoses all across your yard, can make all the difference in making your space easy to maintain.
Your irrigation system can consist of a permanently installed sprinkler system that can water your entire yard on a timer, or you can lay drip hoses in your flower or vegetable beds that can be turned on when needed, and are easily taken up at the end of a season.
After doing the work of building hardscape, incorporating low-maintenance plants, and installing beds, borders, and even irrigation, you may find yourself seeking even more ways to cut back on the maintenance your lawn and garden requires. You can add more low- to no-maintenance elements to your lawn and garden by including non-living features. Some structures to consider are:
When installed with ease in mind, water features can be a low-maintenance addition to your home. Running fountains, when fitted with a well-performing filter, can be a low-maintenance choice that can take up as little or as much room as you need. Water features add sensory interest to an area, helping to create a serene and beautiful landscape.
Trellises allow you to enjoy the beauty of climbing plants without dealing with the trouble they can cause when trailing all over the place. Train your sweet peas, passion flower, wisteria, or squash vines up a trellis and enjoy flourishing foliage along with decreased instances of mold development.
If you’re looking to maximize your low-maintenance areas with a single non-living feature, adding a pergola just may be the way to go. They’re typically rather large structures that can provide shade, a spot for entertaining, and even vertical growing areas.
If you’re looking for something that will require next-to-no maintenance throughout its life, and you’d also like to add a feature that can be used in a lot of ways, a pergola is a great choice.
Once installed, benches require very little attention, perhaps needing a yearly cleaning or to have its cushions occasionally laundered. Benches don’t only take up space that could be otherwise occupied by plants and features that require a lot of care, but they also add a level of comfort to a lawn or garden that is endlessly inviting.
Displaying your eye for design, or even your own artistic flair, is a wonderful way to increase the wow factor in your yard, all the while helping yourself to achieve an outdoor area that requires less maintenance. Sculptures can be as small or large as you need them to be, creating a bold statement and helping you to get a step closer to your dream low-maintenance yard.
After checking out these ideas to turn your home landscape into a low-maintenance paradise, consider what you can do to save time and resources around your own lawn and garden. With a few swaps, your entire outdoor living space can be transformed!
To learn more about building a new hardscape to your home's landscape, download our free ebook, The Expert Guide to Building the Custom Home Hardscape of Your Dreams.
