Low Maintenance Landscaping | 4 Tips For Your Yard
One of the most effective ways to reduce maintenance is by planting native or naturalized trees and shrubs. Many non-natives (especially invasive plants i.e. bamboo, ivy, butterfly bush) are a lot of upkeep, needing frequent pruning, watering and disease control.
Pro tip: Carefully plan your plantings. Make sure you know the ultimate height and width of a plant prior to installing it. Planting a large growing shrub in a place you'd like to see out a window is a recipe for constant pruning.
Bark mulch greatly reduces weeds in planting beds. It does so by smothering the weed seed which is underground. You will need to spray weed killer to the beds and prior to installing the bark mulch.
Pro Tip: Make sure you get sterilized bark mulch. If the bark mulch has not been properly sterilized the mulch will have weed seed and will contribute to weeds rather than hinder them.
One of the simplest way and fastest ways to keep lawn healthy and low maintenance is by overseeding regularly. A thick lush lawn hinders weed development by choking out weeds and weed seed. It also prevents disease from taking over. To receive the full benefit of overseeding, we recommend overseeding in spring, mid summer and mid fall.
Pro Tip: Adding yearly aeration to overseeding maximizes the efficiency of the grass seed.Slow Release Lawn & Plant Fertilizer
Using a slow release fertilizer on your lawn and plants, moderates the speed of growth they experience. Using a non-slow release fertilizer forces very fast growth. A lawn can grow 5 inches within a week if a slow release is not used. What that means is a lot of mowing and/or pruning.
Erica is an avid lover of the outdoors, and transformed that love into a partnership running Valley West with Ryan 2012.
