Maintenance

The final advice we can give when considering any garden design is to think about the maintenance requirements of any scheme.

We are not suggesting that you completely pave over your garden to avoid any grass cutting and weeding but we have listed below some tips that may help reduce your maintenance time.

Clearly, your choices will depend on how much time you have available to spend in your garden.

Choice of Plants

Evergreens come in all shapes and sizes and are not always green!

When choosing your plants, think about how much time they will take to look after.

Slow growing plants will take less pruning – evergreens (except for conifers) are typically slow growing and they retain their leaves, meaning less tidying up in the winter.

Try and choose plants that will fit in the space planned for them when they are fully grown as this could result in little or no pruning being required. If the space is small, you may be continually keeping the size down to avoid overgrowing.

Be aware of the maintenance requirements of hedges as these will need continual trimming. You may be better with a trellis and climbing plants.

If you are looking for all year round colour, flowering shrubs and evergreens with interesting shaped/coloured leaves will flower at different times of the year and only need planting once.

Bulbs provide a good source of colour as they will appear year after year.

Perennials are easy to look after as they grow, flower and die back every year without having to replant.

Make sure you buy the right plants to suit your garden conditions (e.g. soil type, shade, etc) as you will have to replace them if they die.

Think about keeping seasonal bedding plants in pots where they can be easily accessed.

Weeding

Try and avoid ground cover plants such as ivy that could spread out of control – invasive plants can be kept in pots as an option.

It is a good idea to have a few well stocked beds and borders rather than many with few plants and lots of weeds.

Place a thick layer of mulch on your borders in early spring to stop weeds growing.

Pruning

Before pruning a plant, make sure you prune at the right time of the year as you may overdo it. A little-and-often approach may give you better results.

OK, this may be a slight exaggeration but make sure any hedges or conifers are manageable.

Some plants look best when allowed to grow to their natural shape rather than be pruned or trimmed.
Keep shrubs and hedges at a manageable height. Anything higher than you can reach with a step ladder and an easy to trim hedge becomes a big job. Also  don't let hedges get too thick or when you get to the top you wont be able to reach the middle.

Grass

Think about the size of any lawn that you are creating. Whilst larger lawns will generally take more time to cut, this will be quicker than weeding numerous flower beds.  

A big lawn can be easier to cut than a small one because it is more straight forward and less fiddly.

Maintain a 100mm (4”) gap between the lawn edge and your flower border as this will stop grass growing in the border that will be very hard to remove.

Many people delay doing the first lawn cut of the year until it really gets long but it is easier to cut when it is short and cutting it in early spring will kill off seasonal weeds before they can grow.

Other Issues

A compost bin makes it easy to deal with cuttings and is a ready made source of mulch for the spring. Mulch not only keeps weeds down but helps the soil retain moisture - meaning less watering!

Think about the option of employing a maintenance gardener to carry out the more tedious tasks such as weeding and lawn mowing.

Installing a water butt will give you easy access to water and is better for your plants.