11 Low-Maintenance Landscaping Ideas

Landscaping can transform the look of your property, dramatically increasing its curb appeal. Landscaping can make a home look more sophisticated. It can make a business look more professional and inviting. It can give a property character where it previously seemed to have none. You can accomplish quite a lot with the right plants, grasses, and other elements.

Though many people know the advantages of well-designed landscaping for their property, they don’t necessarily want to invest in it because they don’t want to have to be responsible for the ongoing maintenance. While it’s true that maintenance can be extensive for some landscapes, it does not have to be for all landscapes. The choices you make for your landscaping design can have a big impact on your maintenance requirements. A good designer can help you choose low-maintenance landscaping elements that will bring out the best in your property while also making it easy to fit into your lifestyle.

Low-Maintenance Landscaping Ideas

Without being a landscaping expert yourself, you may struggle to come up with ideas for your landscaping that will be beautiful while also making it easy for you to maintain. Fortunately, the experts at Triad Associates have plenty of knowledge and ideas to help. You can try out some of these low-maintenance landscaping ideas to give your home or business a facelift:

1. Plant Perennials and Opt for Native Plants

Perennials are those that will keep coming back year after year, without you having to do a thing. Other plants, known as annuals, have to continually be re-planted. Otherwise, they just die at the end of the season and don’t come back. By planting perennials, you will save yourself a lot of time (and money) when maintaining your landscape.

Likewise, choosing native plants will make it easier for your plants to thrive, reducing the amount of care you will have to give them and reducing the frequency with which you will have to replace them. Native plants are those that naturally grow in your local area, so they are suited to the climate and other growing conditions. You won’t have to constantly tend the plants and nurture their conditions to keep them growing.

2. Plant Living Ground Cover and Evergreens

Keeping a lawn lush and green can take a lot of work (and, again, a lot of money). You have to plant multiple types of seeds for cool and warm weather, and you have to give it lots of fertilizer and other amendments — and then you still might not have a full lawn all year long. If you opt for living ground cover, you can save yourself a lot of trouble. Ground cover includes small, ornamental plants and grasses that are known for growing and spreading rapidly. They will quickly cover the landscape, providing a beautiful blanket of green (or sometimes purple or other colors) that you’ll have to do little to keep going.

Choosing evergreens is another way of low-maintenance landscaping and keeps your landscape looking fresh all year round. With winter landscaping, evergreens won’t drop their green in the winter — thus, their name — but will stay bushy and green all year round.

3. Plant Fewer Trees and Shrubs

You might think that a healthy and beautiful landscape is one that is full of trees and shrubs. But the more trees and shrubs you plant, the more maintenance you will have to do. Those shrubs have to be trimmed and pruned regularly so they don’t grow into a wild mass. The trees will constantly drop sticks and branches, turning your yard into a natural waste landscape. And that’s not to mention how easily both trees and shrubs can become diseased or infested with pests. You have to constantly monitor them and treat them to keep them healthy. Planting fewer of both will reduce your landscape maintenance considerably.

4. Use Functional Hardscaping

Hardscaping includes elements like patios, pool decks, walkways, and retaining walls that can be both decorative and functional. When you are thinking about how it interacts with your landscaping, one of the benefits is that it can take up a lot of square footage where high-maintenance greenery might have been otherwise. For example, you can extend a pool deck to merge with a patio, creating a beautiful space that takes up much of your landscape, giving you functional space with a gorgeous design and very little greenery to maintain, providing you with a great low-maintenance landscaping solution. You can add a few planted areas to add some pops of color, but you won’t feel overwhelmed with maintenance.

5. Utilize Xeriscaping

Who says you need grass to cover your landscaping? You can replace it with xeriscaping — the selective use of gravel, pebbles, and other small stones to cover the ground, keep out weeds, and create beautiful low-maintenance landscaping. Xeriscaping can also be used in place of mulching, with the small stone surrounding strategically planted areas. You get a little greenery, but you don’t have to deal with the maintenance of grass or other large, planted areas.

6. Mulch as Much as Possible

Keeping weeds away from your flowers and ornamental plants can be a real headache. By mulching as much as possible, you can keep the weeds down and extend the area where you have no other greens to maintain. You can minimize areas with grass, keep out the weeds, and better maintain the moisture levels of the plants you do want, all at the same time.

7. Make Use of Retaining Walls

Slopes in your landscape can be a nightmare to maintain. They allow for erosion that washes away nutrients, makes it hard for plants to thrive, and even shifts soil placement. By adding retaining walls to your landscape, you can better manage those slopes. You’ll find it easier to mow grassy areas, maintain planted spaces, and optimize the nutrition in your soil, all aspects of low-maintenance landscaping.

8. Cluster Plant a Cottage Garden

Multiple planted beds throughout your landscape can look stunning, but they can also take hours a week to maintain. Instead, get the benefits of a cultivated space by cluster planting a cottage garden in a designated area. Put as many of the plants you love in the space. Whatever maintenance you have to do will be limited to that area, which will reduce the time it takes to weed, water, and more.

9. Use Ornamental Grasses

Traditional lawn grasses are finicky and hard to maintain. They need water, but not too much water, just the right amount of sunlight, just the right amount of nutrients, and just the right amount of mowing — among other things. Ornamental grasses, on the other hand, don’t need much more than good watering. They look great, and they are easy to maintain. Consider using them as border plants or even as a lawn unto themselves to achieve even better low-maintenance landscaping.

10. Utilize Your Backyard Woods

Natural woods provide a gorgeous backdrop for your landscape, and you don’t have to do a thing to maintain them. The natural look requires no pruning, no weeding, and no cultivating. If you want to create a purposeful look, you can add a border of shrubs or ornamental grasses around the woods.

11. Automate Your Irrigation

Your landscape may need a lot of water to thrive, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be out there every day with a hose in your hand. Consider automating your irrigation by installing a sprinkler system. You can even put it on a timer so that it goes off when it needs to every day. 

How to Achieve Low-Maintenance Landscaping

To achieve a low-maintenance landscape, start by evaluating the strengths of what you have. For example, if you already have backyard woods, you may need to only install a border hedge or grasses. Next, identify your functional needs. Do you have a pool and want a patio for entertaining? You’ll need to design a hardscape first. Finally, identify where you can make the most impact with the smallest amount of greenery. Consider cluster gardens, ground cover, ornamental grasses, and other easy options.

Why Low-Maintenance Landscaping is So Important

Besides saving your sanity, a low-maintenance landscape can also save the environment. Grasses and other plants that need a lot of care are usually treated with fertilizers and pesticides that have chemicals that are harmful to the environment. They also require a lot of water, which is a precious natural resource. By minimizing your maintenance, you also reduce the amount of water and toxic chemicals you are using.

Hire Triad Associates’ Landscape Experts Today

Even with the best tips, you can’t always design the perfect low-maintenance landscaping — and maybe just plain don’t want to take on the job. Hire the landscape experts at Triad Associates to do that heavy lifting for you and to ensure that the results are perfect. We can design the perfect landscape for you to bring out the beauty of your property without saddling you with extensive maintenance demands. Call us today to schedule a consultation with one of our landscape designers. You could be well on your way to transforming your property and increasing its value!