Low maintenance gardening

Time, money and effort. Reducing all of these makes for a happy gardener. Turning your garden into a money pit and a work camp can quickly strangle the ‘gardening love’.  Invest time up front to think through the cost and time implications of every element of your proposed garden:  watering, feeding, pruning, mowing lawns, clipping hedges, protecting tender plants in Winter, sowing replacement plants each Spring. The chore list can be endless.  Some basic questions may help guide your plan: How appropriate is this plant or planting to its proposed place in my garden?  What do these plants need, and how can it get it without ongoing interventions from me? How climate resilient is my plan in the new evolving weather world? How can I work with nature and wildlife to do some of the chores for me?  Luckily nature has provided many solutions with a huge diversity of plants, shrubs and trees. Many will work for you. The trick is knowing which to choose and how to set them up in a way that leaves you time to admire and enjoy them without resenting them.