Tips For a Low-Maintenance Garden

If you are a busy person, then the garden can sometimes be a bit neglected. Not all of us can live the good life and tend our gardens twenty-four seven. The good news is that even if you have little time to tend your garden, you can still create a wonderful and productive space. Even if you work full time, you can still enjoy your garden, growing some of your own food and enjoying a beautiful space when you do have some time to relax.

A low maintenance garden does not have to be a concrete jungle. You do not have to resort to acres of gravel or hardstanding. Most importantly, a low-maintenance gardener does not need to resort to harmful and polluting chemicals to beat back the weeds. You can have a beautiful, productive, organic garden without having to spend hours keeping it in shape. Here are some tips to help you create your own low-maintenance idyll:

Work With Nature, Don't Fight It

The most important thing to remember when creating a low-maintenance organic garden is that you should work with nature rather than trying to fight it. Once you let go and allow some weeds to flourish, you can find that these are not a battle to be fought but a useful part of the ecosystem in your garden. 'Weeds' grow well because they are ideally suited to growing in that location. The key to a low maintenance garden is to always choose the right plants for the right places. If you do, they can flourish without much input from you.

Forests can often thrive without input from any human agency. We can learn lessons from the forest that we can apply to create a low-maintenance food-producing garden. Forest gardening does require a little work at the outset, but once established, a forest garden can produce food perennially with little effort on your part. Fruit trees, underplanted with shrubs and perennial vegetables and herbs can, once established, more or less take care of themselves.

Start Small

Creating a low-maintenance garden does not have to be something that you do overnight. Let go of the idea that you need to do everything all at once. Starting small will allow you to make the small changes that will begin to make your life a lot easier in your garden. Place one fruit tree with a small, layered mulch bed around it to reduce the size of your lawn... plant a few spring bulbs that will come up on their own every year... or pop in a perennial fruiting shrub to take over a neglected corner...

Get Rid of the Lawn

A lawn can be a pain for those with little time for garden maintenance. Though many people think of a lawn as an essential component for their garden – consider getting rid of the lawn entirely and creating a woodland garden or a natural meadow instead. Returning your garden to a more natural state can lift a weight off, and make it easier to let the garden do its own thing without looking awful.