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3 Tips for Getting That Low Maintenance Landscape You’ve Always Wanted!

How to maintain your landscape with as little time and stress as possible while showcasing the most spectacular lawn!


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There is a term that has become a buzzword in the landscape industry… low-maintenance landscape. It has become a term homeowners use to describe the type of landscape they hope to have installed. But what exactly is a low-maintenance landscape? Great question!

Every landscape, everywhere, will need maintenance in some form or another throughout its life. Landscapes are living, breathing things that need to be tended to for continued beauty and enjoyment. But that doesn’t mean you must spend hours every week to keep your landscape looking amazing.

We’ve provided three tips to make your landscape as low maintenance as possible!


Tip #1: Planning and Understanding Your Landscape

As a landscape designer, I always consider growth potential when arranging plants. So often, when a homeowner comes to me needing help with their landscape, some of the critical complaints they have are overgrown shrubs hanging over their sidewalk or a tree that has outgrown its space, and now the limbs are scraping on windows and siding. Understanding the area and planning for growth will help ensure that a plant will grow into, and not out of, the landscape.

So make a plan! It will help to pay attention to the growth potential of each plant before planting them in the ground. This will give it proper space to grow and breathe, and it promises not to be a pain point for you!


Tip #2: Simplicity Speaks Volumes

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Maintenance requirements and design go hand-in-hand. Your low-maintenance goals may be in direct conflict with your aesthetic goals. For instance, water features (although beautiful and peaceful!) can carry a higher degree of maintenance.

Simplicity is born when a low-maintenance landscape meets great design. Don’t confuse simple with boring. You can have a full, lush garden with minimal maintenance so long as each plant serves a purpose and has enough space to allow its full growth potential. Have fun and utilize several different plants to create dynamic texture and color! Just avoid excessive amounts of various plants. That leads us to our final tip; we’ll help you select the right plants that fit into a low-maintenance landscape design.


Tip #3: Plant Selection Matters

When selecting flowering shrubs for your landscape, focus on spring flowering and summer flowering. Generally, spring-blooming shrubs should be lightly pruned in late spring after their blooms have faded.

For example, a lilac blooms on old wood. This means that the blooms will appear on branches that were present before any spring growth; therefore, pruning a lilac before it blooms could result in a bloomless lilac. Forsythia, azalea, ninebark, and viburnum all fall in this category.

Summer bloomers like knock-out roses, panicle hydrangea, butterfly bush, and oakleaf hydrangea should be pruned in late fall or early winter.

Broadleaf and needled evergreens typically don’t require a lot of pruning or maintenance other than shaping.

As long as various plants have been selected to fit the garden space, little maintenance is required. However, if you desire to shape a boxwood, a gentle shearing in early summer after the new growth has turned a dark shade of green is best.

The best tip would be to contact us to design your low-maintenance landscape, and then we can maintain it for you! Super easy decision. Contact us or request a free quote here! We love making our customer’s life a little easier.

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