How To Make Your Garden As Low Maintenance as Possible

Everyone loves having a beautiful garden. But, the price we have to pay for having one tends to be spending lots of time looking after it to keep it that way. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend more time enjoying your outside space and less time maintaining it?

At Composite Prime, we believe everyone can have a beautiful garden without lots of manual labour. And we don’t mean you need to hire a gardener – though you can, of course. If it’s in the budget. You lucky thing you.

Here are our top tips for creating an outside space that meets all your style requirements, whilst freeing up your Saturdays.

How to spend more time enjoying your garden and less time maintaining it

Container gardening

The thing about container gardening is that so much of it is just easier. You don’t have to bend or kneel, and you can lift small pots to wherever you need them. Fertilising is easier because your plants are contained in a small area and nutrients aren’t lost to the earth. You can switch containers around to provide instant colour or to fill gaps and you don’t have to wait for things to mature to see how they’re going to turn out. 

Weeding is easier because your containers have smaller surface areas and aren’t vulnerable to invasive brutes like bindweed and ground elder.

You can move containers around to provide them with optimal conditions, and you aren’t dictated to by the position of your flower beds. You show those plants whose boss.

They do need some extra watering in hot weather, and the right food and compost. But with gadgets to ensure consistent water levels, and slow-release food on the market, there are convenient options to mitigate these little niggles. Containers for the win.

Raised beds

Plants cultivated in raised beds often thrive more than those in the ground. This is because soil tends to remain aerated and less compacted, drains better and warms up quicker in the Spring. This means plants get a head start.

Growing your plants in raised beds brings similar benefits to container gardening, but you can do so in larger areas. The benefits of raised beds rather than ground-level are weed suppression and keeping your lawn where it belongs – on your lawn.

Plant ahead to save time later

Get your garden organised by planting to ensure year-round interest. Plant bulbs for Spring colour in the Autumn, and summer bulbs in the spring. Consider in advance how your garden will change through the seasons to avoid having to fill gaps or balance things out with bedding plants.

Fill your beds with greenery

Fill spaces with large, perennial, and preferably ones that look good all year round. Ferns, evergreens and flowering shrubs are a much better option than annuals that you need to replace year on year.

Lose the lawn

There are so many no-now options out there. From artificial grass to moss and chamomile lawns, to outdoor carpets.  So is there really any need to get your mower out every week between April and November? And don’t even talk to us about raking… 

Switch your timber decking to composite

Yes, we’re sneaking this one in at the end. The low-maintenance properties of composite decking over timber are well-known. If you’re still sanding, oiling, cleaning, staining and treating your timber deck to keep it in good knick then the easiest way to reduce your garden maintenance time is to replace it with composite. A quick wash every now and then is all your composite deck would need. Bring on the relaxation.

Interested in finding out more about the low-maintenance properties of composite decking? 

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