Reduce Garden Maintenance

As summer moves in full swing, we want to spend more time playing and enjoying the garden, not grueling over it. Your garden can flourish with some low, simple inputs such as mulching. No garden is “maintenance free,” gardens look best because of our helping hand. Some gardens require more attention than others, but care of plants comes down to what plants are chosen for the garden. The garden is a reflection of the plants you choose and how you take care of them.
Adding mulch to the garden bed can cut down watering needs, reduce weed seedlings, and over time, this mulch breaks down adding organic matter to soil. Plants require nutrients from the soil – before you lay mulch, add an organic fertilizer such as Plant Tone or leaf litter that feeds over a longer period a time. Mulch at least two inches deep, being sure not to bury woody parts such as trunks of trees or brunches on shrubs. Mulching up to a tree trunk and partially burying it is an improper technique of mulching and can greatly decrease the tree’s life expectancy causing fungal or bacterial growth that can eventually lead to rot.
Every plant is different and requires certain growing conditions to obtain full potential. For low maintenance gardens, choose plants that are adaptable to various growing conditions, require very little pruning (once a year), no deadheading, and have long life expectancy. Seen through our seashore towns, catmint, salvia, sedum, and coneflower all have a place in our gardens because of their durability and toughness. Catmint and salvia can be deadheaded after the first bloom to get a second flush. Even consider removing some perennials (by remove, I mean give to your neighbor) and add shrubs that require little input instead of deadheading and dividing perennials. Try shrubs such as Longwood Blue Bluebeard (Caryopteris ‘Longwood Blue’) which requires early spring pruning for shaping or cutting dead wood out or Eleanor Taber Indian Hawthorn (Rhaphiolepis indica ‘Conor’) for its ability to tolerate dry conditions and heat.
With this past winter, gaps were created where plants succumbed to below freezing temperatures and ice. However unsightly, restraining from filling the holes right away can be rewarding. Consider the other plants in the bed and if the space can be filled either by dividing or letting them grow. Plants will die, as is part of life and gardening. We as gardeners must be willing to adapt. We must ask ourselves the tough questions: “Is it the right plant for the spot? Is it the right plant for me?” Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes the answer is yes. Don’t forget though there’s that saying– there are plenty more fish in the sea.
This article written by Lauren Popper, a plant enthusiast, a graduate of Temple University’s Horticulture Program and full-time garden designer at Cape Shore Gardens.