People who work full time don’t always have the time to carry out their own garden maintenance, especially through the winter. However, they still want to take advantage of enjoying their hard earned garden when they finally do get time to relax.

With a low maintenance garden, it stays clean and smart and still gives a blank canvas for amateur gardeners to add their favourite annuals and concentrate on the plants or vegetables that they really enjoy nurturing.

To help with that, here are 5 tips to get you started on creating your very own low maintenance garden.

1. Lawn Edging

Edging a lawn can be a pretty monotonous tasks and this can drain you of time and of enthusiasm. Putting in some lawn edging will just about eliminate one of those jobs that nobody really enjoys, that includes garden maintenance businesses!

There’s a common myth floating around that putting a plastic or metal edging in place will destroy the look of a natural garden, but the truth is, if you’re mowing at regular intervals this will help the edges to keep it’s structure and help to avoid a good old scalping. Best of all you can even get brown which just about renders it undetectable.

Lawn_Edging

I’ve put a link below to one of our personal favourites. Whether you use this recommendation or not, whatever you do don’t go cheap on this one! Once you’ve put it all in place, the last thing you’ll want to do is start removing and repairing damaged sections.

If you’re really serious you can go for steel but we don’t think it’s necessary, our recommendation is what we use and what has worked for all of our clients both practically and financially. Check out Everedge for more info.

2. Plant low maintenance, slow growing plants

Luckily for us there doesn’t really have to be a sacrifice of beauty to plant low maintenance plants, some are even chosen for the way they look or the fregrance they give off.

Some examples of slow growing, low maintenance plants are:-

Box – Also known as buxus is a slow growing evergreen shrub that can be cut and shaped into form to become the backbone of a formal or informal garden. These can be found in just about every shape and size and can be used as hedging or stand alone shrubs.

Convolvulus ‘Cneorum’ – A silvery low growing shrub with beautiful white flowers, trumpet like flowers. Look great amongst hebes box, lavender and purples like heuchera.

Viburnum tinus – Maybe not one of the most loved but definitley one of the most used in surrey and hampshire gardens. It has evergreen foliage with small trumpet like flowers followed by black-purple fruit from around October to spring. It is the perfect shrub for giving some stunning winter colour and when you catch the scent of its flowers you can see why it’s so popular.

3. Try a Little Less Lawn

I realise I could be shot for even mentioning such a thing but if you really don’t enjoy lawn mowing or your garden maintenance budget is small, having a great big lawned area spells trouble. Grass needs mowing every week unless its natural growth is intentional. There are a number of different styles you can achieve without turfed areas. Some are listed below:

Raised Sleeper Garden – If you’re struggling physically to look after your garden and want as little work as possible with a lot of impact a raised sleeper garden might just be for you. Keep the level the same but build up with beds in quadrants or along each side of the boundary. You can create walkways with the sleeper beds and have gravel surrounding them. This is a clean and very simple design to implement.

raised railway sleeper beds

Patio Design- Had landscaping and patio design is considered the backbone of any garden design. You are always taught to design the structure and then fill the voids with the soft stuff and as turfing is soft stuff, this should be brought into the latter part of the design if at all. Patios have their own beauty in the natural stone, the huge variety in texture and the pure ability for its surface to heat up and change colour in the sun. Patios should serve a practical purpose yet fit in with its surroundings.

4.Decking

Decking is great way to bring you even closer to nature. With the ability to have it extending at any height and any size you can be soaking up the sun with the smell of freshly laid oak decking surrounding you. The reason decking reaches the number four spot is that really is the ultimate addition to a low maintenance garden. Once laid and treated you have somewhere you can enjoy, without mowing and without weeding! Some of the softwood decking laid with ridges facing up can accumulate moss and hold water so it can do with a clean every now and then.

Hardwood tends to do this much less but the benefit of not scrubbing once a year does come at a heftier price tag so that’s definitely one to weigh up if you’re on a tight budget. Below are pictures of a tropical garden we have looked after in Surrey that was terraced all the way along a hillside. The entire structure was made from softwood decking and it was like being in Brazil, it looked amazing!

Garden maintenance, Godalming

5. Mulch/plant up the beds

Big expanses of beds can be a haven for weeds and unwanted pests. The more you can cover open space, the less room there is for disease and the spreading of weeds. There are some benefits to weeds as their roots create carbon pathways and aerate the soil as well as having them for other uses, but the fact that they thrive and introduce other insects spells hours of fighting an pest and weed war! There are a few ways to stop this and to help your soil in the process.

Organic Mulch – Farmyard manure or well rotted compost is a perfect addition to tired soil. It will feed the plants but it will also feed the weeds so you have to make sure it’s spread on at the very least 150mm to suppress the weeds. It will also hold water giving plants the edge and ability to thrive in the heat of the summer.

Bark Mulch – Used by some, despised by many. This is highly recommended for troublesome beds that have inpenetrable weeds. Bark mulch will suppress weeds long enough to block out the light and kill them off, although it may take a little. As well as suppressing weeds it will retain moisture and smarten up a tired old bed to draw your eye to the plants and not the dry soil! Although laying a membrane beforehand does help to stop weeds it’s not always possible so you can just as easily lay a thick covering between plants. Below are some before and afters of a bed we mulched for one of our garden maintenance customers and you can see the difference!

Mulching before

Mulching After

I mention these 5 points because low maintenance gardens are what we’re finding people are wanting more and more of and as we do it more and more, we see exactly what works.

If you’re fighting a losing battle or are looking to have a complete redesign of your garden we’d love to hear from you too. Check out our contact page and fill in the online enquiry form for a no obligation quote and we can help you see the woods from the trees!

We’re different in so many ways so I thought i’d delve into exactly why. Hopeully I do it justice!

With garden design there’s always the ability to sit back and reflect on how a certain plant would look against a wall or how hardwood decking will extend the living space but when it comes to garden maintenance, we have set rules, specific proven techniques and most of all, pride in our work, and it has to be done as efficiently and cleanly as possible.

With that combination sussed you can’t go too wrong but I wanted to be more specific about what we offer and how we like do it.

Lawn Mowing Service – We have a lawn mowing service for just about every situation. All lawns are strimmed, edged and then mown with a top of the range Hayter self propelled rotary mower, leaving lawns with a lush striped finish in half the time of a lesser mower. We leave any lawn mowing to the very end if possible so that it sets off and enhances the jobs carried out until next time.

Pruning – We keep up on our knowledge with plants and trees so we can always advise on buying, planting and pruning. We also make sure to keep our tools clean at all times to avoid diseases being passed to the plants. Our pruning skills include all roses, shrubs, trees, groundcover, palms, climbers and just about everything else found in a UK garden.

Professional Bed Plant Care - Hoeing is an important part of keeping your beds clear of weeds but we also know when bulbs and smaller plants are starting to appear is when you shouldn’t be. Little things like this can make all the difference in the spring.

Feed and Weeding Lawns – We know how important lawns are to people because they’re important to us. The feel of fresh, bouncy grass on your feel is what everyone wants so we’ve feed and weed lawns to keep them at optimum root strength and at there most vibrant green.

Hedge Cutting – We cut and shape just about any species that can be cut and love to use our creative flair to bring back topiary shapes. Most of the time it’s just a case of tidying up a summer’s growth and shaping back into a box shape. We can dispose of all waste responsibly so when we’re asked to, that’s exactly what we do.

In the summer months we take good care of our customers’ plants. We have some arrangements where clients have moved away and would like their plants watered, beds kept weed free and finish it off with the lawn mowing service. This isn’t just to keep the place looking lived in but keeps the garden from falling into disrepair.

Although it’s always nice to have a personal connection to a residential garden, we’re also well eqipped to carry out grounds maintenance and do this on a number of commercial landscaping contracts throughout Surrey and Hampshire.

Beside is a photo of a garden maintenance contract that has stayed with us since day one.

If you live in Surrey, Hampshire or Sussex and our looking for a change or would like your garden looked after, we’d love to hear from you.

For some reason all photos have changed places so the second of the two is actually the first even though the code says otherwise. Will try to fix it but for now see each one has the end result first and the original state it was in as second!

A project we designed and built in Liphook – This was a small new build with a rather soulless garden. Our client however, was far from soulless and had some fantastic ideas on what she wanted. I just wish we had been able to returf for that perfect finish but we were very happy with the end result.

A straight forward but fun project working on two properties with the building development company, Goodall Barnard. It was only 2 minutes from our base in Milland so it couldn’t be easier. This was a new build which needed levelling, regrading, turfing and the planting of around 25 mature pear and semi mature birch trees.

A 1930s 5 bedoom cottage that had been completely gutted inside and it was about to be outside too! We redesigned three separate areas of this property and got to work on taking out the old and putting in the new.

I’ve had my eye on hydroponics for some time because I see the results it brings in my own experiments but also in projects in third world countries and in hugely exciting steps to develop purpose built city vertical farms to feed the city from the inside out. Hydroponics is a closed, sustainable system that needs very little maintenance and utilises very little space very efficiently.

Bright Farms are one of the leaders in bringing urban food production to supermarket roofs and here is a very inspiring video of what we could be seeing in our cities in the next 5-10 years.

Over the past few months i’ve been speaking to some specialist growers who gave me their key tips on growing hydroponically. I’ve also done countless hours of research on the up and coming trends in hydroponics and aeroponics and am in the midst of creating a book that has consumed the past few months of my evenings, as well as our baby boy!

I’ll keep you posted on its release and after the success of the last one i’m hoping it will cut the mustard like the last!

If you want to download your ’50 Popular plants used in garden design’ for free and sign up to the monthly newsletter where I find deals and give gardening tips you won’t find anywhere else, you can find it on our homepage.

Another inspiring video from Stephen Ritz of Green Bronx Machine that shows the way that growing in communities and in urban settings can do great things.

Below are a few tips that we always stick to and you should think about factoring into your garden maintenance schedule in order to get the most out of roses and eliminate pests and diseases long term.

1. Black Spots on Leaves

This disease is commonly known as black spot. Black spots appear as circular with fringed edges on leaves. They cause the leaves to yellow. Remove the infected foliage and pick up any fallen leaves around the rose. Artificial sprays may be used to prevent or treat this kind of rose disease.

2. Stunted or malformed young canes

Known as powdery mildew, this is a fungal disease that covers leaves, stems and buds with wind spread white powder. It makes the leaves curl and turn purple. Spray with Funginex or Benomyl to treat this fungal disease.

3. Blistered underside of leaves

Known as rust, this disease is characterized by orange-red blisters that turn black in fall. It can survive the winter and will then attack new sprouts in the spring. Collect and discard leaves that are infected in fall. a Benomyl or Funginex spray every 7-10 days may help.

4. Malformed or stunted leaves and flowers

This is caused by spider mites. They are tiny yellow, red or green spiders found on the underside of leaves where they suck juices. The application of Orthene or Isotox may help in treating this infestation.

5. Weak and mottled leaves with tiny white webs under them

This is caused by aphids, also known as greenfly and blackfly. They are small soft-bodied insects that usually brown, green or red. Often clustered under leaves and flower buds, they suck plant juices from tender buds. Malathion or diazinon spray may help roses to survive these bugs and help their resilience over time.

6. Flowers that don’t open or are deformed when they open.

Thrips could be the reason behind this problem. They are slender, brown-yellow bugs with fringed wings that also suck juices from flower buds. Cut and discard the infested flowers. Orthene and malathion may also help to treat this problem although it is advisable to do little and often rather than large quantities at one time.

Remember that roses are hungry feeders that require much fertilizer to become healthy bushes so remember to keep tabs on what you have fed them and what you’ll need to feed them through the growing season and they’ll repay you with healthy blooms year after year.