See Examples Of Low Maintenance Landscape Design Adelaide Homeowners Request.
We’re all leading busy, often hectic but certainly full lifestyles these days, struggling to find the time to do many of the things we’d like and gardening is definitely on that list.
For most of us our backyard has become more of a private sanctuary, a place to relax and unwind, or play with the kids. It’s not surprising many have decided to start looking for backyard makeover ideas, or are now ready to make it happen, knowing what garden style they’d like and budget to complete all the landscaping work.
This can however mean different things to different people, but never means No maintenance.
Some find it relaxing to spend time in the garden, planting a few annuals and pruning, especially cut flowers they can display inside the house.
Others, most often men, like to mow the lawn but won’t do anything else such as weeding and then there are those, especially the elderly who just want a nice place to sit and relax, admiring their garden listening to the birds or watching the grandchildren burn off all that energy.
Read on to get some garden design ideas and examples of low maintenance landscape design Adelaide homeowners have requested for their backyard and front gardens.
Some of the garden design solutions will happily surprise you, because no matter what garden style you choose, formal or informal, there are ways to reduce the maintenance your garden needs.
Formal Gardens With Plenty Of Plants
Many people like the structured look a formal garden provides and many clients choose to have as a focal point, or garden design element a tree surrounded by other plants. Slow growing hedges spaced appropriately with ground covers to prevent sunlight reaching the ground will supress weed growth making for a very low maintenance garden full of foliage and colour.
Tony’s Tip For Reducing Weeds
The best way to reduce weeds is to ensure that plants will overlap by 5-10% when fully grown. This creates shade which in turn prevents the germination of most weeds.
When coupled with drippers on each plant, it’s a very effective way of reducing weeds to almost zero.
Shaping your plants early on and in the first couple of years will give you the lines you’re after, whether that be straight lines to suit a direct path entrance or rounded in a ball to echo curved paths.
Informal Gardens With Plenty Of Plants
As with formal gardens, plant selection and placement is critical to achieving an easy-to-care-for garden. Visualising what the garden will look like once the plants have matured comes with horticultural training and experience.
As a qualified horticulturist, Tony Stanton can guide you with his encyclopaedic knowledge of plants to get the right mix of size, shape and colour so what you have to do by way of maintenance is minimal.
Tony’s Tip For Eliminating Root Disease
When planting always dig a hole three times wider than the pot, but the same depth.
This gives the roots an easy time getting established and prevents the accumulation of water at the bottom of the hole (which causes root disease).
To achieve the colours and look clients are after often involves a mix of Australian indigenous species with selected varieties native to other countries but with similar climate conditions to Adelaide.
Chile, California and South Africa provide many wonderful additions to the native plants Adelaide has on offer.
Outdoor Entertaining Areas
When looking at a low maintenance landscape design Adelaide residents frequently ask for outdoor living areas to be included within the plan.
As one of the most requested features or garden design elements Adelaide residents request, the space often doubles as an outdoor entertaining area containing a kitchen of some description, either an elaborate built-in BBQ or pizza oven. Using natural materials including hardwoods, stone and steel will keep maintenance down so you can spend more time relaxing and enjoying your new garden area.
To make the area fun and comfortable at night when the Sun goes down and it starts to get a little chilly, fire pits are a great low maintenance garden feature to sit around.
Natural Gardens With Lawn & Plants
As soon as you mention lawn, most people start listing all the high maintenance activities natural grass is historically known for. Mowing, watering and weeding are typically the top 3 chores many want to avoid, however when looking at a low maintenance landscape design Adelaide home owners can include natural turfs if the right one is selected, with very little work to do by taking advantage of modern technology.
Male Sterile Kikuyu is one variety of grass that is low maintenance. Very drought tolerant, it grows along the ground and supresses weed growth by blocking sunlight to the earth. As for mowing, it’s not as fast growing as most other species of natural turfs, but for that task, if it is a chore you can go without, read on further for a clever solution.
Tony’s Tip For Lawns
In suburban gardens there is seldom room for a meandering lawn, so it’s best to create a shape for the lawn and plant around it.
A formal shape, circle, diamond, ellipse anchors the garden and creates stability. Surrounding the lawn with drifts of plants looks natural without being messy or haphazard.
Remember to leave space in the corners for small to medium trees for shade and interest.
Low Maintenance Garden Design Solutions
Even when using natural materials like stone or pebbles, that in themselves require no maintenance, they can collect dirt and leaf debris reducing their impact on a garden.
One of the major advantages you’ll discover when dealing with Living Pictures By Tony Stanton is nothing seems to be a problem because Tony has already come up with a garden design solution.
The steps below are made with perma-pine risers and gravel treads. However, as gravel is easily kicked around it was decided to mix it with Polyester resin (fiberglass) to make solid but porous steps. It looks like wet gravel. The gravel mix was coloured for earthy tones that blends with the surroundings perfectly.
Fairly new on the gardening scene, automatic mowers are one of the best garden design solutions for those wanting the look, feel and smell only real lawn gives but without the work of having to mow it regularly.
There are a number of brands and models to suit large and small, flat and steep gardens and once set up, come out and mow your lawn for you, finding their way back to their docking station for re-charging themselves.
Native Garden Design Makeovers
When asking for low maintenance gardens Adelaide homeowners automatically mention using natives.
Most native gardens Adelaide clients have, as mentioned above can contain an eclectic mix of indigenous plants as well as varieties native to overseas countries with climates similar to ours.
What mix you end up with, to make your wish for a low maintenance garden will depend on the look you’re after and what colours suit the garden’s style.
Having designed thousands of gardens, it’s with experience and Horticultural knowledge what plants Tony will advise you use when working on your landscape design, transforming your current outdoor spaces into ‘Living Pictures’.
Low Maintenance Watering Solutions
Watering used to be done with hand hoses for plants and rotary or rain style sprinklers for your lawn. It was a tedious and very hit and miss process. Remembering before it was too late was a problem, making sure each of your plants received the right amount of water was impossible, water waste was high and you were tied to the garden.
These days it really is as easy as having automatic irrigation systems set up with lines to control what each type of plant and your lawn receives.
Once configured for the season, these hard-wired or internet-app controlled watering systems take care of everything for you.
With the ability of manual over-ride when there are unusual dry spells during the cooler months or wet periods during Summer, you can set watering times and frequency to suit your plants.
Tony’s Tip For Watering Plants
Never use micro sprays or Butterfly sprays in garden beds as this encourages weeds. Always use drippers and make sure that the dripper is next to the stem of the plant at least when it is first planted.
New, young plants have very small root zones and cannot pickup water from a dripper even if it’s only 150mm away.
Calibrated drippers are best as they emit water at a constant rate regardless of where they’re in the line, at the top or bottom of a hill.
People Also Ask
What’s the difference between ‘calibrated’ and ‘pressure compensating’ drippers?
Calibrated drippers deliver a consistent, predetermined volume of water over a period of time. Pressure compensating drippers deliver the same volume equally to all drippers in a line of irrigation tube.
After A Low Maintenance Garden?
Have something in mind but need a plan? Ask Tony for help.
After booking the initial concept design meeting then completion of both your hardscape construction plans and softscape design plans, you’ll have a good idea of what the costs will be to transform your current garden into the easy to care for outdoor place you’re after.
Whether you’d like a formal or informal design, whether you have a small backyard to renovate, a courtyard garden to update or large back garden you’d like to transform, you can trust Tony Stanton to come up with innovative garden design solutions to match your lifestyle.
