There's no such thing as no maintenance, but it's certainly possible to have low maintenance. I didn't realise how low maintenance my garden was until I retired. A good mix of shrubs/trees and reliable perennials [especially if you allow the shrubs to support them] is always easier to maintain. Those gardens @pansyface mentions are a constant chore, to be honest. I can't see any joy in having something you're constantly trimming and controlling. There are two blokes not far from me who have gardens which they're constantly out in - trimming and pruning. Every shrub is a blob, and so is the lovely purple beech tree at the entrance - well it would be lovely if he allowed to grow. There are huge gaps in the borders which get waterlogged every time it rains. Always cutting the grass to within an inch of it's life. The list goes on. The contrast between those and the garden across from one of them couldn't be greater. It's a lovely mix, and plants are allowed to have their natural shape. I know which one is lower maintenance....
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Thanks folks for your lovely posts folks. Love the differing perspectives. Its helping me form my own context when it comes to the scope of gardening. Although I am mainly container gardening, its still takes time and rightly so. Also time taken to research the care and needs, not simply time taken in the garden. For me gone are the days buying a plant simply because it looks nice, ignorance is no good for the plant.
Time spent doing the research pays off in the longer term. Happy plants that like the conditions you have and are the right size for the available space means less work cutting back, feeding, watering, amending soil etc. This is the time of year when my garden is burgeoning with self-sowers coming up where they like. The work is in the refereeing and thinning out.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
A low maintenance garden for me sounds rather depressing. I want to be out in my garden doing things, but I don't want it all trimmed to within an inch of its life. I want it to flow gracefully and prettily, with lots of flowers and scents, and have wild things living in it.
I hope that pond in the lovely photo that @Ceres posted has some method of escape for animals that fall in.
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
I love gardening but as I grow older I know that what I may be able to do today I may not be able to in 10 years. So I am now changing my garden from time consuming baskets and containers and going more for shrubs etc. I want to be able to 'potter' and actually sit in my garden without the work overwhelming me!
“Every day is ordinary, until it isn't.” - Bernard Cornwell-Death of Kings
I think that if everyone in a street was given an identical garden - say a lawn, patio, a tree, half a dozen shrubs and two flower beds, and a small veg patch, no two would be the same in a year or two. I can envisage that each garden would be maintained to varying degrees. Some would manicure, weed, fiddle and prune and others would let it be. Over time some would add to it, try new things and grow their own veg and flowers. I suppose my point is that you can make a garden as low or high maintenance as you can or want to do.
What is hard work for some, eg. nurturing plants from seed, is light and pleasurable to many. My idea of heavy work is tree pruning, pond-building etc. I suppose to keep the garden looking good, lawn cutting, shrub pruning and weeding are basic necessities, so the more you have to do then the higher the maintenance.
We used to have a garden consisting of a lawn, various shrubs, fruit bushes and trees. This was because both of us were commuting to London to work, spending too much time away from home, and basically relying on the weekend, or late evenings, to be in the garden.
Now I don't work, the wife just part time. So there is more time to be in the garden. So we have more colour. Flowers, more fruit bushes and herbs. And more insect life. Hence, more birds. It's lovely. Less lawn - which gets cut less often.
Now we're selling up - or that's the plan. The need for NO STAIRS!! It'll be all start again. But I relish the challenge.
I'm the jam maker, not my wife. It came out of necessity. One summer, with my wife abroad for 5 weeks, our freezer broke down while I was at work, and all our frozen fruit defrosted. Result? Rather a frantic few evenings of jam making. First time, but never looked back.
So that part of the garden remains well tended. And it's worth the effort.
I suppose you could only really regard a “garden” as low maintenance if it were all concrete/paved and you didn’t have any pots of flowers or any bedding of any kind. It would still require some maintenance of course - sweeping/washing/weeds removing from any cracks etc.
Even that would need strimming here - the couch grass and brambles would swallow it in a single season. My garden resembles Pansy's I call it 'rewilding'. Very fashionable doncha know I did start off trying to make a more 'normal' garden, but it's beyond my skill and resources to do that, so the area of flower bed has shrunk, lawns have basically gone (I do have a nice moss patch that the wrens love), I only have pots in one small area close to a water butt. You can adapt gardens to suit your ability and competence. Like @Busy-Lizzie, for me the joy is in doing 'gardening' not in 'having a garden'. I do what I can and what makes me happy and have learned to welcome the wildness that comes where I stop
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
'Low maintenance' for me means a garden that does require solid hours of hard work at certain times of year, but for long stretches can be left to its own devices--which means choosing (or rather figuring out) plants that will be happy and as disease-free as possible in my conditions, planting them reasonably closely to deter weeds, and annual trims and mulches to keep in moisture and reduce mollusc attack. I'd agree that a lawn is high-maintenance. Shrubs and perennials are good for keeping effort to a minimum, but addiction soon takes over!
Posts
I didn't realise how low maintenance my garden was until I retired. A good mix of shrubs/trees and reliable perennials [especially if you allow the shrubs to support them]
is always easier to maintain.
Those gardens @pansyface mentions are a constant chore, to be honest. I can't see any joy in having something you're constantly trimming and controlling. There are two blokes not far from me who have gardens which they're constantly out in - trimming and pruning. Every shrub is a blob, and so is the lovely purple beech tree at the entrance - well it would be lovely if he allowed to grow. There are huge gaps in the borders which get waterlogged every time it rains. Always cutting the grass to within an inch of it's life. The list goes on. The contrast between those and the garden across from one of them couldn't be greater. It's a lovely mix, and plants are allowed to have their natural shape.
I know which one is lower maintenance....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Its all great and love it. Thank you.
I hope that pond in the lovely photo that @Ceres posted has some method of escape for animals that fall in.
So I am now changing my garden from time consuming baskets and containers and going more for shrubs etc.
I want to be able to 'potter' and actually sit in my garden without the work overwhelming me!
Now I don't work, the wife just part time. So there is more time to be in the garden. So we have more colour. Flowers, more fruit bushes and herbs. And more insect life. Hence, more birds. It's lovely. Less lawn - which gets cut less often.
Now we're selling up - or that's the plan. The need for NO STAIRS!!
It'll be all start again. But I relish the challenge.
I'm the jam maker, not my wife. It came out of necessity. One summer, with my wife abroad for 5 weeks, our freezer broke down while I was at work, and all our frozen fruit defrosted. Result? Rather a frantic few evenings of jam making. First time, but never looked back.
So that part of the garden remains well tended. And it's worth the effort.
Even that would need strimming here - the couch grass and brambles would swallow it in a single season. My garden resembles Pansy's
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”