Make life easier in the garden
Want more time to enjoy your garden? Naomi Slade offers five ideas to make your patch beautiful and easy to care for, too
Rather than packing them in too tightly, give plants room to grow
With plants now romping away and the weather outside temptingly warm, there’s no better time to be a gardener. But despite legions of delicious pottering jobs to enjoy, and an enormous will to do them, time might not be on your side. Fortunately, whether planning a garden from scratch or tending an established plot, there are lots of ways to make managing your garden easier and less time-consuming. Some jobs can even be avoided altogether! So, make 2020 the year you free up your leisure time for the tasks you actually want to do. ➤
1. PLAN FOR perfection
When laying out a new garden or border, don’t just think about shapes and colours, also consider the amount of space each plant will take up. Rather than packing them in too tightly, look at the ultimate height and width and give permanent plants room to grow. This not only saves money, but also time in the long term. Moving and thinning can be avoided, along with reduction pruning, thus releasing a couple of hours for more pleasurable activities.
It’s worth giving some thought to plant choice, too. A garden full of deciduous shrubs and trees can commit its owner to a lifetime of sweeping up, whereas with evergreens leaf-drop is more gradual. Whether you go for slender cypresses, Ilex crenata or the diverse purple, green and variegated palette of pittosporums, evergreens do need careful siting (so as not to shade out other plants), but make fantastic structural specimens .
Hedges provide evergreen architecture too, yet boundaries of privet or Lonicera nitida can chain their owners to the clippers. Opt instead for slow-growing osmanthus or holly, or, a mixed deciduous hedge of native shrubs that can be cut back annually or even less. Alternatively, go glam with a hydrangea hedge for a long season of interest. ➤
2. GROW greener
For time-poor and eco-conscious gardeners there’s another bonus: the easiest and lowest effort option is often the greenest too.
After all, why spend time weeding, when wildflowers provide nectar for pollinators and the leaves nourish their young? Why drive ourselves to extremes of tidiness, when a dense clump of climbers provides a safe nesting space for songbirds and a pile of pots is the perfect place for them to forage for insects?
Leaf blowing and close-mowing have also come under scrutiny recently. It stands to reason that using machinery to raze plants to the ground and blast loose material with high-pressure air also damages the organisms that are quietly trying to live there. These same creatures might otherwise mobilise in our favour, as predators to our gardening pests, potential pollinators in our veg patch, and in gently turning and aerating the soil.
Long grass with mown paths decreases the time burden and environmental impact, while containers of drought-resistant succulents and warm-climate plants, such as osteospermum or lavender, reduce time spent watering as well as the water used. Every little helps.
3. LET CONTAINERS look after themselves
Technology can help you care for container plants indoors and out. Time was, it was down to us to check whether a pot needed watering, but now apps like www.waterbugapp.com (£2.99, iTunes) and happyplantapp.com
(free download with in-app purchases) can remind us when our plants need a drink!
For lush growth, a slow-release plant feed or drip feeder popped in the top of the pot will gently nourish your plant for months.
You can also reduce time spent watering houseplants and patio containers by letting the pot do the work. Various types of self-watering pot are available from companies including Elho and Lechuza, incorporating water reservoirs and wicking systems. Or, go for automated watering. This can be as simple as screwing a nozzle onto an old drinking bottle and upending it into the soil; fitting a seep-hose on a timer; or installing an automated sprinkler system that monitors the conditions and decides when to water. ➤
4.CHOOSE easy plants
Low-maintenance gardening is often equated with planting slow-growing evergreen shrubs. But, while they do have their uses, too many can make a garden as interesting as a supermarket car park!
Fortunately, there’s a range of alternatives that look great for long periods with little effort. Floral troupers such as hylotelephiums, flowering shrubs including hydrangeas and azaleas, and foliage plants such as heucheras provide interest over several seasons, flower for ages and just require snipping back once a year. By and large, they need little staking and feeding, and repay neglect with a display that charms wildlife and onlookers alike.
Watch out for sprawling plants that present themselves as super-easy but come with a sting in the tail. Steer clear of rampantly spreading Geranium macrorrhizum, Vinca major and V. minor, some bamboos and
Crocosmia crocosmiiflora in an ‘easy’ garden.
When it comes to self-seeders, it’s a matter of personal taste and inclination. Alchemilla mollis requires a minimum of input and is very pretty, but it does self-seed madly. Lesser offenders might include Geranium phaeum, foxgloves, Verbena bonariensis, Nigella damascena and poppies – their beauty outweighs their bad behaviour and a little light editing of unwanted seedlings should suffice.
Floral troupers repay neglect with a display that charms onlookers and wildlife
5.INVESTIN a few key gadgets
There are plenty of products on the market to help save you time and effort in the garden. On a small-to-medium scale, robotic mowers are fun little mowing machines that beaver around an area defined by perimeter wires, snipping the grass as it grows then taking themselves off to recharge on a docking station. Reviews are good, but they’re still pricey.
Lightweight tools
Gardening can be heavy work but nobody has to be a hero! Various lightweight tools exist to make the going easier: you may find lightweight shears and cordless hedgetrimmers especially useful.
If you garden on heavier soil, invest in a small border spade and fork set. Specially designed spades with pointed blades are perfect for slicing through heavy clay.
Keep unwanted plants under control without chemicals using a hoe or one of the thermal devices on the market (see our Buyer’s guide on p94). While flame throwers are exciting, Hozelock sells an electric version that safely toasts rogue specimens into submission.
Perfect for hefting around heavy paving, gravel or manure, motorised wheelbarrows have all the benefits of a normal wheelbarrow, but without the pushing – and some come with assisted dumping too. Load up the barrow, touch the button and off it goes! ✿