Low Maintenance Do it Yourself Landscaping Ideas
Having a beautiful landscape is not only an option for those dedicated to intensive maintenance. Just a few DIY projects and implementation of simple ideas can cut down on the time needed to maintain the various aspects of your landscape to a significant degree. The most effective overriding concept when coming up with a low-maintenance landscape design is to plan ahead of time to take steps that make common landscaping tasks go quicker and easier. Does this Spark an idea?
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Vegetable Garden Tilling Room
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A landscape design that depends on a vegetable garden to provide fresh produce directly from the yard to the table can become low-maintenance. You can make a noticeable cut in the time needed to raise vegetables by providing enough space between your rows to allow easy maneuvering with a tiller. Save chunks of time by using a tiller instead of having to weed by hand.
Planting for Local Conditions
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One of the best ideas to integrate into your landscaping project if you want to save maintenance time begins before you even dig a hole for your plant. Research your climate and soil conditions relative to the plants that thrive best under those conditions. Plants that aren't naturally suited to certain growing conditions means added maintenance time for watering, fertilizing, protecting from the cold and staving off disease.
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Mulching
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Time spent mulching pays off in time saved doing maintenance work like weeding and hoeing. A layer of organic material reduces the amount of watering required by decreasing the effects of evaporation. Mulching also provides nutrients that make the plant grow stronger and healthier, thereby reducing maintenance chores to ensure robust growth.
Paved Areas
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Paved walkways and surfaces contribute much to reducing the time spent on landscape maintenance. The most obvious effect is that the more of your yard that is covered by foot paths and patios, the less work that is required to maintain the lawn. Paved paths protect the lawn from wear and tear, which cuts down on the time spent tending to it.
Avoiding or Removing Invasive Plants
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A surefire idea for creating a low-maintenance landscape is making sure that you avoid introducing invasive plants. These plants can spread by roots or seeds and will create far more work for you than is needed. Among the plants that you should take great pains to avoid are bamboo, mint, horsetail and almost all varieties of violet.
Ground Cover
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Lawn maintenance chores like mowing, raking and watering can be reduced by going with an alternative means of lawn care. Ground cover like Algerian ivy, mondo grass and juniper cover significant areas of your yard and provide you with time that would otherwise be spent on caretaking chores. If you don't want to span the yard with ground cover, just place it around trees so that you don't have to work your mower over roots and beneath limbs.
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References
- Photo Credit ground cover, image by hazel proudlove from Fotolia.com
