Low Maintenance Gardens Save Time

Certainly it would be wonderful to have a landscaped garden in your yard. Everybody loves a beautiful garden with colorful flowers, trimmed and maintained bushes and shrubs neatly arranged. It's even better when spiced up with visual displays like fountains, a grotto, or bird cages.

Many people think that maintaining a landscaped garden is costly. But really, you can have a landscaped garden even with a minimal budget. The secret is to use low maintenance landscaping.

Low maintenance landscaping is not only for those who have a limited budget. This idea is also great for those who want to have landscaped gardens but are just too busy to keep up the maintenance. Essentially this is a way to have a beautiful, manicured yard without having to spend a lot of time at it. Here are some gardening tips on how you can have a low maintenance landscaped garden.

• Plant only those kinds of plants that don’t need a lot of pruning and cutting. Coniferous and flowering shrubs are good examples. There are lots of other choices as well.

• Investing in ground cover plants is a great idea if you hate weeding. These kinds of plants don’t allow weeds to develop and grow tall. Things like colored stones, wood chips, and decorative bark are also great to use when covering areas where you don’t want weeds to grow.

• For flowers, make use of perennials. They come back every year so you don’t need to shop for new ones and plant them every spring.

These tips will give you a good start on your low maintenance landscaping. Even so, most plants will need some care and maintenance during the growing season. Even here, though, there are things that you can do to save time. For example, you could install a timed sprinkler system so you don't need to constantly drag out the hose to water the flowers.

The amount of maintenance that a garden needs really depends on its design. If you want low maintenance landscaping, be sure to opt for the most simple but elegant design. Keep the contours and lines as simple as possible. Think of the purpose that each plant will serve in the garden. If it doesn’t have one, think twice about planting it. The more elaborate design a landscape has the more maintenance that it needs.

The kinds of materials used in your landscape also impact the maintenance. Patios and paved walkways usually require the least attention and care. More structured garden elements such as arbors, lawns and rose gardens will require regular attention so it is better to avoid them if you don't have the time to spare.