Low-Maintenance Landscaping Ideas

Step 1: Plan Your Landscape

To make your landscape low-maintenance, thinking and planning your landscape is essential. Use a notebook and pencil to sketch out your plan and jot down your ideas. The more time you put into planning, the less work you’ll have to do later, which is a good first step toward a low-maintenance landscape.

Evaluate your current landscape. Note the types of plants and vegetation that are currently growing, as well as any hardscaping, existing flowerbeds, and any areas of excess sun or shade.

Helpful Tip

Evaluate your soil with a pH test kit. Knowing the type of soil with which you’re working will help you decide which plants to use and which fertilizers are applicable. The healthier your soil, the healthier your plants, which cuts down on tending to them.

Determine your particular needs. Plan your landscape around how you’ll be using it. Houses with small children may need open, grassy areas that are safe and easily monitored. If you like to entertain, you may have an established patio area for special occasions. Expanding your patio and adding additional paved areas or hardscaping features can cut down on plant maintenance as well as create an even more attractive destination for family and friends. If you have pets, they often bring additional landscaping maintenance tasks to your workload. Creating a separate outdoor space (dog run) for pets to do their business can let you enjoy your pets’ company and reduce the wear they can create on your landscape, which in turn decreases lawn maintenance tasks.

Be honest with yourself about how much time you want or plan to spend working in the yard. Planning it out and starting small and simple will go a long way toward creating your low-maintenance landscape.

Step 2: Keep Your Landscape Simple

Remove High-Maintenance Trees and Plants

Make your landscape design simple to keep it low-maintenance. If you don’t like raking leaves, remove trees that lose their leaves excessively each season. While it may seem like a big job now, removing trees and other plants that create more work will pay off in the long run. Conversely, if you want to plant trees, starting with ones that do not shed leaves excessively will cut down on your workload.

Install an Underground Sprinkler System

If you don’t have time for watering or just want to avoid it, consider installing an underground sprinkler system. This type of irrigation system isn’t all that difficult to implement and allows you to water your landscape with the turn of a knob.

Replace Lawn with Hardscaping

Keep in mind that even hard surfaces made of concrete, stone, and brick will need maintenance periodically, just not as much as your grass and flowerbeds. Concrete surfaces can last many years without maintenance. Paver and brick patios and walkways often need some kind of maintenance every three to five years, depending on how much the ground settles. Keep this in mind when deciding on your materials.

Step 3: Choose Low-Maintenance Plants

Trees and shrubs generally require less care than flowers and other plants. If you’re unsure how much maintenance is involved with each plant, ask an expert at your local True Value hardware store.

Helpful Tip

Keeping plants grouped together in beds makes maintenance easier than isolated plants spread throughout the landscape.

Helpful Tip

If your region is arid or drought-prone, practice xeriscaping—the use of plants that require less irrigation and are more resistant to drought.

Helpful Tip

Don’t be averse to letting some parts of your property grow “wild.” If your property is adjacent to a wooded area, for example, you can let these border areas go, which cuts down on the amount of required maintenance and creates a nice transition from the more manicured sections of your yard to the woods beyond.

Helpful Tip

Groundcover plants require less regular care than turfgrass. They also work well on slopes that are difficult to cut or in places where you struggle to grow grass. Placing groundcover along borders and fences can cut down on how much you have to use a string trimmer to trim grass your mower can’t reach.

Groundcover plants incorporated in landscaping

Step 4: Keep It Low-Maintenance

The way you create your landscape also plays a part in keeping things low-maintenance. For example, you can keep weeds at bay by mulching garden beds. Adding about 3” of shredded bark mulch helps keep weeds from growing in beds and keeps plants healthier by insulating them from temperature extremes.

You can fight weeds in your yard and keep the grass healthy by mowing at the right height. Grass that is too short makes your lawn susceptible to weed growth and sun damage. It is generally recommended that your grass be at least 2″ tall. If you’re not sure, set your mower at a higher setting to start, so that it doesn’t cut off more than 1/3 of the grass blades’ height.

Fertilizing your grass at least once each season helps it stay healthy, which will cut down on how much care you have to give it generally. Many fertilizers also contain a weed or pest control ingredient to make your lawn even more maintenance-free. Leaving grass trimmings on your lawn after cutting not only reduces your amount of work, it also can be good for the grass when the trimmings decompose and provide the grass with needed nutrients.

Watering correctly keeps your plants healthy, thus reducing the need for care. Too little water and your plants will wither and require more upkeep. Too much water can lead to fungus growth and disease. Lawns typically need about 1” of water per week for healthy growth.

That’s it! Now you know some ways to keep your landscape as low-maintenance as you want it to be.

Project Shopping List

Here’s what you’ll need to complete this project successfully.

• Notebook and pencils
• Soil test kit
• Underground sprinkler system
• String trimmer
• Lawn mower
• Mulch
• Fertilizer
• Garden hose
• Hose nozzle