Low-maintenance landscape ideas mean less work and more play!

The desire for low-maintenance landscapes just keeps growing while at the same time, our love for outdoor amenities like fire pits, grills, dining areas and seating shows no signs of slowing. So combining the two should mean less work and more play, right? California landscaper and North Coast Gardening blogger Genevieve Schmidt has some low maintenance landscape ideas, with fuss-free planting suggestions.

Whether you’re relaxing during a private moment in your personal sanctuary or are hosting a dinner party, you don’t want to come out to a tired, ailing landscape. The idea is to go for something that’s easy-care, with season-long interest, so you never have to worry about what’s outside your door.

Not-so-needy blooms

If you’re looking for less watering, spraying and pruning, flowers aren’t out. Schmidt regularly uses drought-tolerant, blooming perennials like catmint, hardy cranesbill geraniums, ornamental sages, Russian sage, lavender, lion’s tail, euphorbia, sunrose, artemisia and phlomis.

Landscape roses are another favourite of Schmidt’s, and she often turns to the Flower Carpet® roses series. Often called “desert roses” in the southwest, these shiny-leaved, colourful bloom factories can be a great choice for low-maintenance, season-long colour in beds or containers.

When planted en masse, carpet roses (which spread more horizontally than vertically and become covered with a blanket of blooms) are also a great way to quickly fill in a large bed while turning it into a more low-maintenance, sustainable landscape. The series has also won the most awards for disease-resistance, most notably, Germany’s coveted All Deutschland Rose (ADR) designation, the world’s top honour for disease-resistant roses.  And, if you want roses in containers, which succumb to drought even quicker, Flower Carpet roses Next Generation line offers an additional 15 years of breeding.

Native and adapted plants (those that naturally grow or thrive in your area without using a lot of resources, respectively are also ideal.  Schmidt notes: “Native plants are especially nice for outdoor leisure areas, because you’re inviting in the local cycles of wildlife and a balanced local ecosystem, which means wonderful extras like singing birds, the sight of butterflies and nature’s own methods of pest and disease management.”

There’s a native plant society for almost every state, she notes, and you can go to your state’s page to learn more about native plants in your area.

Fuss-free foliage

Low-maintenance foliage can also soften and character to outdoor living spaces.  No flowers doesn’t have to mean no colour. The colourfully foliaged Tropicanna® cannas, which can handle wet feet, can be potted and set right into your favourite water features. It also works well in containers, both small and large.

And the dark-red, glossy, strap-like foliage of cordyline Festival™ Burgundy (also know as cordyline Red Fountain™ in AU/NZ) is so extremely drought-tolerant, and pest-resistant, you’ll wonder if it’s real. Its basal-branching low-growing structure allows for fuller, more compact clumps and a gentle fountain effect – perfect for containers or colour blocking around your favourite outdoor living spots.

Festival, which is only hardy in USDA Zones 7 or warmer, also overwinters beautifully as a houseplant, so you can simply bring the patio pot in or out depending on the season, or replant it in the landscape year after year.

Schmidt loves the bright-red colour of Japanese blood grass, along with other low-maintenance ornamental grasses like maiden grass (miscanthus – although it’s considered invasive in some areas of the country), blue oatgrass, leatherleaf sedge, fountain grass and noninvasive dwarf or clumping bamboo. Favourites in other parts of the country include ‘Elijah Blue’ fescue, pampas grass (also invasive in some areas), Northern sea oats, blue panic grass, muhly grass (also extremely salt tolerant and prevents sand dune erosion) and little bluestem (hardy to USDA Zone 3).

Other foliage favourites include phormiums (New Zealand flax), nassella (needlegrass) and Mexican feathergrass and the new coprosma Pacific™ series. Succulents have also exploded in popularity – in containers, hanging baskets and even as wall art.

Of course, the plants themselves aren’t the only part of a low-maintenance landscape. There are also tips and tricks like mulching, grouping together plants with similar needs, efficient irrigation, reducing your lawn and maintaining healthy soil.  But low-maintenance plants are a key ingredient.

“Some work in the garden is great if you enjoy it, but we all have tasks we’d rather not do,” says Schmidt. “I know I’d rather be doing artful pruning, potting up containers and deadheading instead of weeding or mowing. The idea is to reduce or eliminate what really feels like work so you’re free to focus on what really matters to you.”