12 Jul 6 Steps to a Low-Maintenance Landscape

You will be happy to know that gardening in keeping with ecological tenants produces a low-maintenance landscape. Knowing when to apply a lighter hand and let nature dictate how your garden beds evolve produces less labor on your part, and less need for external resources (like fertilizers, mulch, and pesticides) to be applied.

1. Plant Selection has a huge impact. According to my standards, to qualify as low maintenance, a plant needs to require maintenance no more than once a year. Some of my favorites include:
   
   

• Desert 4 o’clock 
• Lavender 
• Baptisia 
• Blackberry lily
• Ozark sundrops
• Pasque flower 
• Kannah creek buckwheat
• Winecups
  

Native and adapted plants have a leg up on any other plants that would need coddling to survive in your site and region. Besides increasing their chances of surviving and thriving, they create a regional aesthetic – often referred to as sense of place – that bring in the look and feel of the natural elements of a place so that, when spending time in your garden, you feel connected to the environment beyond.

2. Right plant, right place is a mantra taught in master gardening classes for good reason. Plants of every kind need to be planted where they have room for full expression. The mature size always needs to be considered. Don’t be fooled by the cute baby in the nursery pot; it could become a monster and swallow your front porch. Always read the tag for mature dimensions and plan accordingly.

3. Relinquish control. Allowing your plants to migrate over time to settle into the places in your garden where they will be happiest will give you the most success with the least effort. Be open to interlopers. In the last couple years of tending the landscape where I call home, I have noticed a variety of native plants (Mahonia repens, mountain mahogany, chamisa to name a few) sprouting up and moving from a paradigm of taming nature, I have welcomed these plants with open arms and couldn’t be happier with the result. Sure, they didn’t always take up residence in the perfect spot, but knowing that plants growing from seed that are natural to this area, I have either carved out room for them to flourish, or let them overlap with existing plants. 

Like many of us, I had learned that each plant should have it’s own clear space where it should stay and have a foot or so of empty space surrounding it between other plants. This comprised what I thought of as a tidy, attractive landscape. I have seen first-hand how this results in more labor in the garden if you are determined to keep it this way. Keep up with the new paradigm and welcome the wild instead.

4. Grow your own mulch. This is what is referred to as living mulch. Mulch provides us the benefit of keeping moisture in the soil and keeping weeds out. When plants are planted densely enough to fully cover the soil upon maturing, they provide these benefits without the need of hauling in resources to do the job.

5. “Crowded” full gardens are good for nature. More biomass and biodiversity creates better habitat for all members of the ecological web. The more your landscape is in balance with nature, the more natural processes can take over. The birds eat the insect pests for example and you don’t have to do a thing. No toxic chemicals or time spent fighting an uphill battle in the garden when you’d rather be out hiking, enjoying the peaks and the aspen that happily grow there.

6. Grow site appropriate plants. Oh yeah, and don’t try to grow plants that don’t want to be at your elevation. Aspen are a guilty pleasure for anyone below 8,500 feet in our area. They are our most pest and disease-riddled native tree and the best way to reduce their stress is by giving them more water, which means they have no business in a waterwise landscape because they are water-thirsty, and you need water thrifty. Only a couple letters difference in the word but such different meanings. I advise taking that hike to see aspens where they happily and effortlessly grow, and plant plants appropriate for your conditions in your landscape to avoid the uphill battle.

To the Glory of the Garden,

Eva Montane

President, Columbine Landscapes