Designing to Lower Your Maintenance

Maintenance is important for two reasons:

• Over time it is probable that you will spend more time and money maintaining your landscape than you did installing it.
• If you design a garden that is too time-consuming or expensive to maintain your efforts to create a beautiful garden are wasted. 

Maintenance comes in six categories: 

• Watering
• Pruning and dead-heading flowers
• Weeding
• Replacing plants
• Replacing hardscape materials
• Mowing 

What follows are basic strategies for lowering maintenance in each of these areas. 

Watering:  

• Install a reliable irrigation system using a smart timer.
• Plant plants that require little or no water.
• Mulch and amend soil well to retain water. 

• Utilize hardscapes with minimal plantings.
• Using synthetic turf eliminates the need to water lawns. 

Pruning and dead-heading flowers: 

• Pick plants that grow to their desired size and then stop.
• Pick plants that grow slowly. 
• Pick darker colored smaller flowers that are less noticeable when not deadheaded. 

Weeding: 

• Always mulch planting areas with at least two inches of infertile, insulating material.
• Use plants that are dense, evergreen, and at least one foot tall to block out weeds beneath them.
• Plant spreading plants meeting the above criteria that grow together in a dense mat, reducing the need for mulching. 

Replacing plants: 

• Pick long-lasting plants.
• Avoid annuals. 

Replacing/refinishing hardscape materials: 

• Sandstone tends to leach its color and wear away, requiring regular pressure washing and sealers. Avoid this and go with other flagstones and wall-facings, such as Three River’s flagstone.
• Bamboo lattice/trellis etc. tends to deteriorate in about five years. Cast iron, aluminum or hardwood lasts a lot longer.
• Cheap low-voltage lighting fixtures often lose their patina and fall apart after 3-5 years. Get better quality.
• Use LED bulbs in low voltage fixtures and they will last two to ten times longer than other bulb options.
• Using Trex Deck and similar products reduces the need for ongoing staining/treatment of decking material and can last longer than wood.