Historically, gardening has always required some amount of effort. Whether you’re staying on top of your weeds or re-planting dried-up flowers, occasionally, your garden needs a healthy dose of TLC.
Sometimes, in our busy day-to-day lives, we can’t always find the time to ensure our gardens are looking as good as we’d like, leading to many unloved and underappreciated yards. In such a scenario, it can be tempting to get rid of any greenery and start from scratch. While this does make life simpler, it also removes all of your garden’s natural appeal.
Do you find it hard to summon the motivation to do your gardening? If so, keep reading for a rundown of our favourite easy garden ideas.
Do You Need a Low Maintenance Garden?
Gardening is a great hobby to keep you outside the house and connected with the outdoors. Of course, not all of us can dedicate as much time to it as we’d like. Therefore, low-maintenance gardens work wonders if you:
- Have a disability
- Are new to gardening
- Are renting a property
- Are maintaining a holiday home
- Are raising children
- Are looking after someone else’s garden
How to Create a Low Maintenance Garden
Knowing Your Problems
Before planning out your new garden, it’s worth identifying exactly what you struggle with. Rather than looking at your garden as one huge struggle, try being as specific as possible.
This will help you get right to the cause of your gardening issues, allowing you to prioritise any potential remedies and possibly saving a lot of time. Is your lawn too large to mow regularly? Or do you have trees with lots of leaves. Or, maybe, you feel you’re lacking flowers. Compared to the alternative solution of just erasing your entire garden and starting from scratch, this approach can even be useful in preserving the aspects of your garden that you do enjoy.
Choosing Plants
While you certainly can make a garden that is easier to maintain than most, it’s worth remembering that no garden is ever immune to maintenance.
This is most evident when looking at the plants you keep. Occasionally watering is a necessity for most flowers, trees and shrubs that can be kept in the UK – the only thing that matters is just how much they need.
For example, conifers are extremely low maintenance and can get enough sustenance throughout the year purely through the occasional rainfall throughout each season.
Replacing Your Lawn
Lawns are the most laborious aspect of gardening by far. Big or small, maintaining a luscious green lawn is extremely difficult, requiring a lot of time and energy to be done properly.
The most efficient tactic to adopt in the pursuit of low maintenance is swapping your natural lawn out entirely in favour of artificial grass. Synthetic grass requires no watering and sustenance, meaning it is much easier to look after. It’s also important to consider that installing fake grass is quite a costly process involving many phases of construction, landscaping and, of course, installation.
If high costs are out of the question, you can try and make your existing lawn work more toward your desires. If you find it growing too much, maybe prioritise cutting the most visible areas first and leaving the background slightly longer to save the additional effort.
Planning Your Space
Larger areas are the most difficult to maintain. This is purely down to the fact that there’s more considerations to make around where you place things and how you choose to maintain them.
Going back to our previous point around lawns, oddly shaped patches of grass are more difficult to cut. Circular shapes or those with many winding turns and walkways are harder to manoeuvre, leading to them being neglected, becoming overgrown and looking unsightly.
If you have decided to completely strip back your garden, you now have the golden opportunity of being able to select paths, sections and grass areas that work for you.
Choose Low Maintenance Furniture
Different furniture materials require varying levels of love and care. Wood, for example, needs ongoing upkeep to ensure it’s left in the best condition possible. This can include things like sanding, waxing and staining. Metal furniture, on the other hand, can suffer from rust and corrosion. However, other options include aluminium garden furniture, which doesn’t rust at all.
Then comes style considerations. Just because a material is easier to maintain, doesn’t mean you should neglect other options. But, if low maintenance is what you’re after, you can’t go wrong with the hard-wearing nature of metal garden furniture.
Craft Your Ideal Garden with KETTLER
The best gardens are those that conform to your wants and needs.
If low maintenance is what you’re after, KETTLER can help. Browse our selection of easily maintained garden furniture today to create a space that’s just right.
