Low maintenance landscaping that frees you from the garden hose!

Low maintenance gardening consists of plants that does not require much pruning, fertilizing, or watering. A good and practical garden should be beautiful, functional and much easier to maintain. You must always remember that in today’s world people hardly have free time and if your garden is too complicated with wide variety of plants and trees it can prove costly and headache to maintain such garden. Therefore our aim should be to design and develop a garden that requires minimum maintenance practices, minimize inputs of natural resources and outputs of waste and environmental impacts.

By adopting following techniques following benefits are derived from low maintenance gardening:

• Simplicity: One of the key message of low maintenance gardening is- Keep it Simple. Try to keep limited plants and also fewer species which require less care and maintenance. Limited plant palette makes it easier to keep up with their care and prevent their intrusion on neighboring plants. Also, the fewer the species, the easier it is to limit yourself to those that are well suited to your site.

• Proper selection of plants: Today most home landscapes are dominated by inexpensive and quickly established plants which usually require frequent maintenance. So, look for low maintenance plants which are native to your region as these plants won't need extra water or protection from winter cold. Native plants have evolved to survive the pests and diseases of your area, and won't need regular spraying. Trees and massed shrubs are probably the lowest-care garden plants. If you select shrubs that are the right size for their location, they may need no care other than feeding and watering. Match the plant to the soil and sunlight conditions of your site to save time and labor.

• Lawnless landscaping: The smaller the lawn, the easier and less expensive it will be to maintain. Lawns are inherently high-care because they need regular mowing. If you can’t avoid lawns completely keep its size small and select grasses that don't have problems in your area. This will benefit you in terms of saving lot of time, money, and hard work.

• Avoid growing Vegetables: They are probably the highest-care garden feature. They require special soil, climate, regular watering, fertilizers and pesticides which means more care, attention, work and time.

• Reduce heat and air-conditioning bills: By planting more trees it increase oxygen in the atmosphere and utilize carbon dioxide, slow evaporation from the ground and help cool temperatures in summer. Various studies have proved that deciduous trees planted appropriately along the south sides of buildings can reduce air conditioning costs by up to 20%. Also consider rooftop gardening its environmentally friendly and has many benefits.

• Prevents harmful effects on environment: Adopting environmental friendly gardening techniques can reduce water, air, noise pollution, makes limited use of water, uses yard waste as fertilizers etc.

• Installation of good irrigation system: This will help you to save a lot of time as watering your garden will not be any more hassles and time consuming.

Before developing your garden one must consider various maintenance factors which is very vital for a healthy garden. Due to competitive life we all want to limit garden maintenance to tasks that are creative or relaxing and not time consuming and problematic.

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