4 Steps to a Garden That Almost Takes Care of Itself if You Want More Flowers for Less Work
Having a beautiful backyard doesn’t need to be difficult or take up a ton of time, you know.
You don’t need to compromise on good looks to grow a low-maintenance garden that practically looks after itself. Make some smart choices and you’ll enjoy more flowers and a tidier garden while simultaneously cutting time spent on chores. Sound too good to be true? It’s not, I promise, because this is how I’ve been gardening for the past decade.
It’s not that I’m a lazy gardener – though it is true that I like to spend just as many hours relaxing in my paradise of petals as I do maintaining it. I simply don’t subscribe to the gardening norm that you must invest months of work to be rewarded with a few weeks of flowers. No – I take advantage of horticultural short-cuts that are rooted in science to get more glorious blooms in return for less hard graft.
These are the four garden secrets behind my lovely but seriously low-maintenance backyard. Try one, try two, or try all four so you can put your feet up and enjoy your blooming backyard more often. Cheers!
1. Embrace Groundcover
If you don’t grow groundcover plants in your borders then you’re missing a trick. Using easy-grow groundcover plants that thrive on neglect won’t create any more work but will save you a heap of time. Not only does groundcover do a great job of suppressing weeds once it’s established, but it acts as a living mulch to lock moisture in the ground, meaning you don’t have to water as often either.
If you’re up for shearing off faded blooms or doing a quick prune now and then, then you can use groundcover that flowers for months on end to bring a whole new layer of blooms to your borders. There’s even a brand new groundcover hydrangea, if you really want to show off!
My go-to groundcover is creeping phlox as it’s polite enough to skirt around bigger plants yet persistent enough to effectively smother weeds, and its fragrance is as delightful as the flowers. I also grow Sedum ‘Angelina’ in my roadside bed, because while I always want this part of the garden to be presentable, I don’t want to out there in my raggedy garden shorts, keeping it that way. And honestly, I haven’t watered this green dream of a plant for over two years now, and it couldn’t be happier.
Adding groundcover to your garden needn’t be expensive, either. Because of their naturally spreading nature, most groundcover plants can be regularly dug up and divided to make new plants. Or if you’re really on a budget, choose groundcover that can be grown from seed in spring.
2. Discover Sterile Plants That Don’t Need Deadheading
Most plants grow flowers to be pollinated by insects so they form seeds and have a few shots at species survival the following year if they’re annual, or attempt to expand their kingdom if they’re perennial. Once they’ve set seed, these plants will slow down or even stop flowering completely – which is why we deadhead. Remove fading blooms forces the plant into having another go at making seed, so it produces fresh sets of petals.
Some hybrid plants don’t do this though. When two different plant species are crossed by breeders, the cells can’t always combine properly to form seeds in the new hybrid. The hormone signal that usually shouts ‘stop flowering now’ when seed sets never gets sent, and the plant keeps on blooming. And blooming. And blooming!
Some modern lantana cultivars such as ‘Lemon Drop', ‘Miss Huff’ and ‘New Gold’ are sterile, as are Angelonia (Summer Snapdragons). I grow heaps of Geranium ‘Rozanne’ whose violet blooms tumble through other perennials, and Gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’ for swathes of flowers on high, wiry stems (it's good to know that this has recently been reclassified as Oenothera, if you’re struggling to find it online). Lavender ‘Grosso’ is another of my sterile favorites, as its long stems and fragrant flowerheads are perfect for crafting.
The other huge benefit is that sterile plants don’t gift you a gazillion unwanted seedlings to pull up in spring.
3. Add Self-Seeders That Need Light to Germinate
At the very opposite end of the spectrum are self-seeders. Now, some self-seeders are a godsend in a low-maintenance garden, sprinkling flowers through borders and quietly filling gaps. Others are a huge headache, germinating in swathes of new plants that can overtake a border.
The trick is to choose self-seeding plants that need light to germinate. This means seeds will only germinate where there’s room to do so, and also that you can simply fling them into a bed and pretty much forget about them.
I have cosmos, columbine and love-in-a-mist threaded through all my low-maintenance borders, and they happily squeeze in between bigger perennials. How much of any one variety I get very much depends on the weather, as some years suit some better than others. I cheat the system a little by cutting a few seedheads at the end of summer and giving them a good shake where I’d like more to grow, too.
4. Split Drought Tolerant and Deep Drinking Plants
Growing plants that have different moisture needs side by side means you’ll be forever faffing about with a hosepipe. Some plants will be wilting through lack of moisture while others complain about being overwatered with unsightly yellow leaves. The answer is to split up borders into drought-tolerant plants and those that need consistent moisture, so you never water unnecessarily.
I take a pretty relaxed attitude to gardening but this is where I get strict, and not just because I live in a dry part of the country that's nearly always on a hosepipe ban in summer. Giving plants the moisture levels they prefer makes a huge difference to them thriving, rather than simply surviving, and impacts how abundantly they flower and for how long.
I also train deep-drinking plants to become more drought tolerant by giving them more water, less often. Most plant roots will grow towards moisture so, by saturating the ground when you irrigate then leaving it to dry out, you encourage roots to grow downwards where they will be better-able to source their own water supply. Water every day with a light sprinkling and roots will stay at the surface where they’re far more vulnerable to drying out.
Bonus Move to Cut Lawn Maintenance in Half
Okay, so your lawn doesn't grow flowers but, as I'll wager that grass is the single most high-maintenance plant in your garden, cutting chores here means tons more time to appreciate your bloom-packed borders. For starters, setting your lawn up for a good season in spring will save you heaps of maintenance through the rest of the year. But right now, there’s a really easy way to speed up the time it takes to look after your lawn, and that’s to leave the mower clippings where they fall, as a mulch.
The tips of the grass blades that are snipped off every time you mow are full of nitrogen. So, rather than putting them on the compost pile or into the trash, let them break down to fertilize your lawn, as well as lock in moisture. Just be sure to mow when it’s dry so the clippings don’t clump together and, if you don’t have a mulching mode on your mower, mow regularly so the clippings are short.
This is how robot mowers work – and speaking of which, if you’ve ever thought about buying this ultimate time-saving garden device, now’s a great time to buy. Once midsummer is past – especially for models that have an updated design in the pipeline for the following year – products often heavily discounted, so there are usually good deals to be found.
The Best Mower Deals We Found
