With the swift pace of modern living or when raising a family, the benefits of a low maintenance garden are innumerable, but we’d like to prove to you that this won’t necessarily involve a back yard full of gravel.
It’s possible to possess your own varied and beautiful landscape, full of colour and wildlife, without having to toil through baking-hot summer months. Just follow our expert tips:
1) It is a widely know fact that the lawn can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of a garden due to the need to regulate it. Traditional lawns usually mean lots of chemicals and treatments to keep them under control.
The answer many people turn to is an expanse of decking or gravel – whilst this can look very attractive in portions of the garden, if you’re like us and love to relax in a natural environment we are accredited suppliers of “Wildflower Border Turf” from the brilliant Wildflower Turf company. This turf includes both native and non-native species which will flourish is a variety of soil types. It’s also an incredibly low maintenance turf with only one or two cuts needed a year.
2) As mentioned before, another trick is to reduce the size of your lawn. Decking or patios are great ways to cover the majority of the extra space – hard ground surfaces suppress weeds and require very little attention. Feel free to contact us at Go Wild Landscapes for more information and advice.
3) Make sure the labour intensive parts of your garden are focused in one place, either near the house or the tool shed to minimize walking and wheelbarrow distances. Positioning a water tap nearby will also help.
4) Avoid too many hanging baskets and containers – these need a lot of work to prevent drying out.
5) Installing an irrigation system will make watering a doddle!
6) Prevent weeds from appearing in your borders by laying down weed suppressant matting – Go Wild Landscapes could even do this for you! When properly laid and covered in mulch, you could have a weed-free border for several seasons. If young weed seedlings do manage to take root in the mulch, they can easily be hoed off. However, be wary – if undertaking this work yourself, make sure you eradicate all perennial weeds before the membrane is fitted, otherwise they will start poking through your matting and will be even tougher to remove.
7) Finally, although there is no such thing as a zero-maintenance plant, evergreen shrubs will still flourish with very little attention. There are plenty to choose from, to suit all soil types and aspects.
Just go with the flow. Let grow what your soil supports and let plants self seed where they will, which can’t be done if mulches or ‘weed’ suppressing matting is used .Just pull out excesses. Learn how and when to use a scythe.