Go low maintenance in the garden
For many years I’ve been espousing low-maintenance gardening. More than 20 years ago I wrote “after many years of frustration I finally realized that the kind of garden I wanted was relaxed and relaxing, with nothing in it I have to coddle or to worry about too much; a garden that beckons me to enjoy it instead of reproaching me for not working in it. A gin-and-tonichammock-good-book kind of garden where nothing is forced to be neat if it doesn’t want to be and where I never feel guilty about doing absolutely nothing productive.”
Since I wrote that I have had five gardens of my own to “relax” in plus two others with free rein in and I have never once followed my own advice. At the same time, I also described myself as a reformed compulsive gardener. Reformed? Ha! There should be weekly meetings for compulsive gardeners.
I love perennials. In theory perennials fit the bill. How many times have I heard a beginning gardener say, “I want something I don’t have to plant every year.” Ergo perennials.
Sounds so simple. Not simple. A few are not fussy at all, but a lot are fussy about where they live or what they live in and if they get fed and how often they get watered. My dirty secret is that I have planted just about all of them, or at least all the ones I love the look of. Not even always love, sometimes just like a lot, sometimes just infatuated with, sometimes the equivalent of a drunken onenight stand, only you go out to the garden the next day and wonder why you ever thought you liked that thing let alone allowed it in your bed.
Then there are gardeners who never have an experience like that. They have all the plants they want and would never go home with a strange plant just because of its looks. They never start plant relationships that are totally doomed from the start or iffy at best. They listen if their friends warn them about a plant.
I am settling down. I have taken an oath (again) to stick to the kind of garden I wrote about when I was young (!) and naïve. I know what I should and should not do and I really want to put my wayward ways behind me. I stopped going to George Street when I met Newman; why can’t I stop going to nurseries? Or go to a nursery and choose one good thing and go home out of it?
Doreen Whalen in Mount Pearl is not as loose a gardener as I am, (if indeed she ever was). She wrote “I thought I’d share a few pictures from our backyard makeover that we completed last summer. We have a choice of sun, shade, part shade — depending on where we sit in the yard. It’s an alternative to those of us who no longer want to weed and cut grass but still want to have a beautiful backyard. It’s very low maintenance and has over wintered very well, just a broom needed to sweep off the stamped concrete and a bucket to pick up the tree twigs that had fallen. It’s the perfect solution for us in our mid-60s.”
I envy her. She has the kind of garden I described in the second paragraph. She does not need a support group for compulsive gardeners. Considering the sizes of the garden and garden-in-progress that I have now I couldn’t replicate hers even if I wanted to, but it really is worth sharing; patio stone, pea gravel, mulch and raised beds. Weeds will still sprout but pulling them up will be a cinch.
The raised beds can be as chock full as you want them and the mulched area is also perfect for low/no maintenance shrubs if you wanted a bit more planting.
Even with a big garden you could have areas of stone or pea gravel for a fire pit or a hammock.
Do as I say, not as I do.