Low Maintenance Garden Ideas

Living in the moment. Relieving stress. Taking time to stop and breathe in your surroundings. These are all key factors that resonate with the contemporary national psyche. So, if you’re keen to slow down a little and breathe a little deeper, we’ve got some great low-maintenance garden ideas that will help your overall well-being embrace this state of mind.

Designing a low-maintenance garden will allow you more time to relax and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors, without having to constantly maintain the weeds or prune bushes. And with the right mix of plants, you can create a beautiful space which requires minimal maintenance. Perfect for yoga poses and magical for mediation!

It all comes down to how involved you want to be in maintaining your garden and how accessible you want it to be. You can make your garden easier to maintain in several ways:

If you are thinking about investing in some decking, make sure you choose low maintenance materials (composite decking is the best for this). Spend time planning how you are going to use this space and be sure to create decking that is large enough for you to do what you want to do on it – comfortably.

So, don’t fall into the trap of making up a patio area that fits your family but doesn’t include space for any guests!

Borders require weeding. A clever solution is to gravel an area or cover with wood chippings (laying a weed barrier underneath) and decorating the area with well-placed pots. This looks really effective and can cut back general garden maintenance massively. It’s also often easier to water a few pots than weed a large area. A compromise could be to introduce some raised beds which, again, are easier to maintain.

Easier than digging out turf to create a flowerbed and turning over the soil, a planter can be filled with compost, providing your plants with the healthy nutrients and nitrogen that they need to take from the soil to grow healthy and strong.

Having real plants and borders, planters or beds is not usually the issue with maintaining a garden, it’s the weeds. Weeding weekly will keep a flowerbed or planter from being overgrown. However, if you’re a hard-working professional with very little time or inclination for gardening, there are other ways to get around it.

One sure-fire way of halting the march of the dandelions is to lay mulch or bark. Starting from a blank canvas, you can lay out a breathable weed membrane over the topsoil. You can lay an organic layer of mulch around your plants to give an organic feel to your bed, whilst keeping weeds at bay.

Sounds obvious, but creating edges introduces a little more order into your space and can contain, for example, gravel. Edging lawns and borders properly can save many hours of scooping escaped gravel or soil and returning it to where it should be!

Keeping your garden looking good, means choosing your furniture carefully. Hardwood furniture certainly lasts longer, but it requires a link of paint every year to keep it looking good. There are cheaper rattan alternatives, which don’t require varnishing, the downside is that they will not last anywhere near as long.

Unless treated, all organic material eventually succumbs to the elements. You just need to weigh up the options, would you rather keep buying every 3-5 years, or invest in a set that will last and just touch it up with varnish or stain every year?

It’s important to think about the type of plants you choose. Keep your plant variety to a minimum and invest in less demanding plants such as lavender and perennials. Introduce shrubs as these are great border fillers. Osmanthus, Choisya, and Myrtus are all examples of low-maintenance plants that are easy to grow and are ideal for the haven you are creating.

To investigate composite decking as a material for your new low-maintenance garden, take a look through our extensive range of composite decking products and find a colour that you can live with for 25 years. Then install it and enjoy living the dream, a garden you can enjoy without the hassle of constant maintenance.

If you want a garden with zero maintenance you could follow the lead from this customer. As well as installing stunning two-tone composite decking from NeoTimber®, they also had their borders packed out with these stunning artificial trees and plants.

Take away the stress of weeding, planting and remembering to water, just plant these trees and enjoy looking at these gorgeous specimens all year round.