30 July 2019
Real Estate Our 5 top tips for a low maintenance garden
Gardening, you either love it or hate it. But, let’s be fair, an attractive outdoor living area is something most homeowners wish they had.
To help transform your outdoor area, we’ve come up with five top tips to create an easy, low maintenance landscape in your backyard.
#1: Plan for low maintenance
To develop a cohesive and thriving outdoor space, which lives up to your low maintenance expectations, get to know your garden. Learning about your space will help you in your plant selection.
Our top tip: Plan your space before taking spade to dirt. Research online and ask the plant store assistant. They’ll be able to help you make an informed decision.
#2: Achieve landscape simplicity
The main purpose of landscaping is to create a joyful environment. If you don’t have a lot of time, energy, or money, for your outdoor area when it comes to upkeep – simple is best.
Our top tip: When planning, use the same (relative) principles as home staging:
- stick to a limited palette, or a small variety of plants
- choose all-season plants to help you manage your maintenance woes
- choose native plants that require little-to-no attention once they are placed in the ground.
#3: Reduce your watering needs
Gain back valuable hours usually given to mowing, fertilising, watering and weeding your lawn by reducing your ground cover.
There is no reason why lawn can’t fit the maintenance envelope, but high traffic, sloping, or shady areas could be utilised in other ways, especially if it’s patchy and weedy. Try hardscaping, using concrete, asphalt, or even stones to create a solid ground cover. If hard ground isn’t the way you would like to go, invest in evergreen trees and bushes.
Our top tip: There are now a huge variety of eco-friendly alternatives to a grassy lawn. If hardscaping isn’t your style, consider low maintenance groundcover alternatives that spread quickly, smother weeds and fill pathways. In New Zealand mondo grass, creeping boobialla, and thyme are popular options.
#4: Mulch your garden beds
Landscaping can be a rewarding activity, unless you have an aversion to weeds. A solution to keeping weeds at bay is to consider mulch in your garden beds. Mulch, better known as wood chips, bark, leaves and pine needles, is a material commonly spread over the surface of soil to create an aesthetic appeal, allows water retention in plants, and prohibits weed growth.
Our top tip: Be on trend this summer, by using black bark to add an element of style into your garden. Use it to enhance or contrast with the plants in your garden area.
#5: Pot plants for easy colour
If the world of horticulture seems too daunting to venture into just yet, consider taking small steps with pot plants. Incorporating potted plants into your landscaping provides a low maintenance, versatile and eye-catching option for your home and garden. Yes, they do need to be fed, watered and weeded like a normal plant, but they are limited in their ability to grow past the size of the pot itself – weeds included.
Our top tip: We’d recommend using planters, rather than individual pots, so your garden is less cluttered from the little pots around the location. This also allows for practical usage of herbs and other edibles.
Return on Investment
If you’re investing or selling your home, a well landscaped property with curb appeal will attract both tenants and buyers, resulting in that all-important return on investment, while keeping garden maintenance costs down.
For owner-occupiers, planning your low maintenance outdoor space can give you extra time to do more of the things you enjoy.
