Sustainable Gardening

Practical answers from nature-loving garden gurus

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Low Maintenance Gardening 101

Probably 80 percent of the people who call me for gardening help have one big requirement: Make it low-maintenance! So first I say there's no such thing as a NO-maintenance garden, then get to work teaching them how to create gardens that fit their lifestyle. So a huge chunk of my coaching advice is right here for the taking.

Articles on this Site

• Designing for Low Maintenance looks at the big picture in creating a low-maintenance landscape — plants versus patios, lawn versus borders, and what about a nifty pond?
• Plants for Low, Medium or High Maintenance divides plant groups into high-maintenance, low-maintenance, and those, (like perennials or turfgrasses) that can be either, depending on which ones are chosen and how they're grown.
• How to Garden the Low-Maintenance Way is an info-packed walk through the real-life tasks of gardening — like planting, watering, weeding, pruning, fertilizing, mulching — and explains how to do them the easy way.
• Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich, author of Weedless Gardening.
• Easy-Care Roses tells the good news — that there are roses that require no spraying, minimal or no feeding or supplemental watering, and look great in the garden. Some are recent introductions; some old stand-bys.
• My hot tip for low-maintenance containers is to use sedums.

Related Articles on this Site

• Sustainable Gardening Practices
• Sustainable Plants

Stories from Garden Blogs

• Fear of Water links to a revealing story in the Washington Post about fountains. Quite a reality check.
• This article on drought tolerance provoked 30 comments from some passionate, well-informed readers.
• And that one prompted this follow-up on drought-tolerance — because it's a hot issue!
• Xeriscaping — turns out it's more complicated than we thought.

For More Information in Print

• Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich
• Color Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses by Darke
• American Woodland Garden by Darke
• Ann Lovejoy's Organic Garden Design School — by my favorite organic designer.
• A Year Along the Garden Pathby Ann Lovejoy
• The American Mixed Border by Ann Lovejoy
• Naturalistic Gardening by Ann Lovejoy
• Organic Lawn Care by Paul Tukey, spokesman for the important SafeLawns campaign.
• The Secret Life of Compost by Malcolm Beck was recommended to me by a serious composter.
• Rodale's Weekend Gardener
• Rodale's Low-Maintenance Gardening is great and only $2.70 used on Amazon. Excellent overall how-to-garden book for lower maintenance and eco-friendliness.
• The Rodale Book of Composting — they've been doing it for decades.
• Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening
• The Truth about Garden Remedies by Jeff Gillman
• Organic Gardening Magazine — another trusted source for decades.
• The Well Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust explains how to get better appearance from perennials. They really do need tending to.
• Drought-Resistant Planting by Beth Chatto
• Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden
• The Dry Garden by Beth Chatto
• Dryland Gardening by Bennett
• Gardening the Mediterranean Way by Gildemeister
• Time-Tested Plants by Pamela Harper
• The Informed Gardener by Linda Chalker-Scott

Not recommended: Beyond the Lawn, or any "low-maintenance gardening" book that include sweeping endorsements of lawn replacement or, as this book does, ponds!