Ideas for a low-maintenance yard?

[panacea]

Weeding, I get, it is necessary, but you can develop some personal tolerance for less than perfect. Assuming you've put down some kind of weed barrier? Or maybe some kind of spreading grown cover like phlox or periwinkle. And really, there's nothing to say you can't put down some decorative rock in problem areas and do a bit of a hybrid like in Arizona. They do that there out of necessity, not because that's the only place you can do something like that.

Trimming, why not just let the plants take their natural size and place? Did the landscaper not plan for this? Maybe you need to get a different landscaper in there to make suggestions on how to correct your issues. Hopefully you don't have to tear it up and start over.

Even more so with the moving around of plants. Why? Put them where they belong and leave them be. A garden that has a bit of a wild look can be every bit as nice as a meticulously manicured one.

I'm not a real gardener, so I can't really offer great ideas, but don't let yourself become a prisoner to your garden.

I've become more tolerant for less than perfect over the years. We've found that the weed barrier doesn't help much- just makes it harder to pull the weeds out. We've added some ground cover in the last couple of years and that seems to really help. Now that you mention that, I think the work load has decreased quite a bit in those areas.

Weeding can be reduced. Do you have weed barriers and mulch? Natural mulch must be applied thick, needs a new layer every year(IMHO). I have seen, but never tried, a mulch made from shreaded tires. It was not cheap, but it shouldn't decay. Have you tried Preen as a weed preventive? Worked well, but you are applying chemicals.
Not sure I understand why you need to move plants, we did very little of that.

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Again, no weed barriers but we really should be using more mulch. Tried the Preen, but not sure it did much. We have bird feeders, which we have to fill a couple time a day, so this might be creating some of the weed problems. We're not moving a lot of plants... we have daisies, purple cone flowers, etc. that tend to spread which is nice but sometimes they start to grow in areas where I don't want them... like in the middle of another shrub or something. Maybe I just shouldn't worry about it.

After 15 years of experimenting, my system has evolved to this: Pine needles, roundup, Christmas trees, and heather. The goal is a forest-floor motif.

I use roundup in the spring to kill anything that tries to grow in the pine needles.

I plant Christmas-type trees, or allow the volunteers to grow.

I plant some heather plants.

The heather does really well here, even with little sun. It grows very slowly, doesn't need any maintenance, and blocks out other plants.

I've had rosemary in the past, but that required some maintenance.

Really like this approach. Very nice and easy to maintain!

Mine (so far) are just grasses. But I want to get some wildflowers going too. We coop a garden on a nearby farm, and the farmer planted wildflowers in the garden a few months ago. This is how they looked today. Amazing that the wildflowers could have grown 4' tall in a few months.

Beautiful!

 

[panacea]

A few shots of our back and side yard...

 

[unno2002]

[FONT=&quot]Have you considered edible landscaping? Our yam vines (leaves & young stems edible, as well as the in ground tuber) seem to take the AZ heat well, and once they got big enough they overpowered the grass. Some pavers for a walkway, and a mix of in ground, raised beds, and containers… [/FONT]

 

[Midpack]

I am by no means recommending it, but a former co-worker who lived in another neighborhood across town (thank goodness) - decided all the fertilizers/other chemicals, energy & pollution associated with mowing, and paid watering weren't socially responsible. So he let his entire lawn and landscaping "go" for almost two years - no mowing, weeding, or anything else. You can imagine what it looked like, but eventually his neighbors "convinced" him to resume taking care of his lot.

98% of our neighborhood keeps their lawns/landscaping nice or better. But we have a neighbor next door who has never fertilized or weeded in more than 6 years, and mows at a frequency of about once every 3-4 weeks. They have volunteer trees growing against their foundation, the largest up to 15 feet tall, and in all the landscape beds. The house has been for sale for over a year, but evidently no buyers are interested - imagine that. I hope someone buys it, any new neighbor would be an improvement...

 

[daylatedollarshort]

We have a few trendy neighbors putting in edible front yards and other neighbors freaking out over how it looks. I am in the pro-edible front yard myself, but my main concern going forward is a low water yard. I spend less on veggies at the Asian markets right now than we do on our water bill per month.

Our water department provides rebates for replacing lawns with native plants.

 

[EastWest Gal]

See if you can find Weed B Gone Max. I tried it last year and it killed most of my creeping charlie. It's now starting to come back again, but I haven't been able to find "Max" this year. I was spraying it about once a week for 2 months before it knocked it out last summer. I read that it's good to spray it right before the first frost

I use Roundup in a number of places for creeping Charlie and hard to pull weeds. One landscaper gave me a tip-just make it more concentrated if it doesn't 't work the first time. So I buy the concentrate and double the amount in the gallon sprayer. Works well.



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[samclem]

I use Roundup in a number of places for creeping Charlie and hard to pull weeds. One landscaper gave me a tip-just make it more concentrated if it doesn't 't work the first time. So I buy the concentrate and double the amount in the gallon sprayer. Works well.

The good thing about the Weed-B-Gone type weedkiller is that you can kill weeds in (most) grasses without killing the grass. In "open" areas, the Roundup works pretty well on almost everything. I haven't needed to increase the concentration yet, but I'm sure it would work.
The Creeping Charlie is fairly resistant to most of the older conventional 2-4-d type broadleaf weedkillers, but newer (more expensive) brands with added active ingredients slow it down a bit. I think the pre-emergent chemicals are supposed to do a good job on it, if they are applied at the right time.
I try to minimize applications of all this stuff by using it when it will be most effective and just where I need it. I get the impression that the commercial lawn service guys just spray everything and do it often because 1) The customer wants to see a perfect lawn and 2) time is money and they just want to walk the yard quickly with applicator, they can't afford the time to look for weeds. The yards they do look great, but . . .

 

[athena53]

Weeding, I get, it is necessary, but you can develop some personal tolerance for less than perfect. Assuming you've put down some kind of weed barrier? <snip> And really, there's nothing to say you can't put down some decorative rock in problem areas and do a bit of a hybrid like in Arizona.

People have already mentioned that weeds end up growing through the weed barriers and I wanted to add a caution about decorative rock. Most of our flower beds were "mulched" with rock (stones, 1 to 1.5 inches across) when we moved in 11 years ago. I hate that stuff. I've pulled a lot of it out and pushed some off to the side or worked it into the ground. Rocks/stones are evil as a ground cover. The house was built 30 years ago. Over time, enough dust/dirt has gotten between the stones that it supports a healthy crop of weeds, but it's a pain to get rid of them without chemicals. You can't cultivate with tools and if you pull them, half the time the roots remain. I spend way too much time pulling weeds and when we downsize I will be taking a hard look at the landscaping on the properties we buy. No more fussy flower beds and rock gardens.

Good to hear about the vinca- we're getting some next week to cover areas where some dead shrubs were removed. We're in the Midwest and have had wonderful luck with dwarf Korean lilac. I never could get regular lilacs to grow but these require little care, they don't need much pruning and they smell heavenly when they bloom. We started out with 2 and have planted another half-dozen of them.

 

[Badger]

Our driveway goes across the back of the house to the garage, there is a 16X16 concrete outbuilding/shed, a 24X32 patio with pergola, a 16X16 (mulched with grass clippings so no weeding) raised bed garden with mulched pathways, and the rest of the area covered by decorative gravel except for a few small areas of grass. The front yard is grass with fruit trees and a couple of palm trees. It takes about 1 1/2 hours a week to maintain other than picking fruits and veggies.

Cheers!

 

[TromboneAl]

This is a neighbor's house--it's a vacation rental:

They are out there maintaining the yard all the time, and to me, it looks, at best, messy.

 

[Lsbcal]

I've become more tolerant for less than perfect over the years. We've found that the weed barrier doesn't help much- just makes it harder to pull the weeds out. We've added some ground cover in the last couple of years and that seems to really help. Now that you mention that, I think the work load has decreased quite a bit in those areas.
...

Weed barriers might depend on what you are trying to keep out. In our area (Northern California) a 3 inch layer of medium bark works well. It allows the plants you do want and that might be spreaders to get their roots down into the soil. Occasionally I bring in another few cubic yards to get the thinning spots filled in. Deer hooves tend to chomp it up a bit but only on the deer's frequent used paths.

I do not like ground cloth because it's hard to replant in an area without finding it and cutting into it, plus it deters the spreading roots of planted bushes.

 

[rodi]

All of this is very dependent on the area/climate you live in. I've lived and owned homes in So. Cal, Northwest Washington, and Philadelphia metro area.

Lawns are great in NW WA and in Philly. Plenty of rain to keep them green... just mow them and you're good.

They are terrible in So. Cal... take too much water, turn brown during the frequent water restrictions...

We use a mixed approach. We have a flowering groundcover in the front, with hedges along part of the front. It requires edging every few months.

In the back yard we have a couple of different areas... the dog poop area is just wood mulch that we get free from the city dump. Along the fence are the camelia bushes, bouganvilla, and some hedges. Fruit trees (mainly citrus on another side of the yard. Flagstone pavers with DG between them under the clothes lines. River rock around planters with tomato plants and artichoke plants, a couple raised veggie beds, and some clumping daisy shrubs and rosemary bushes near the fruit trees. It's chaotic - but VERY pleasant to hang out there. Friends comment what a pleasant yard. Very little grass - what we have we don't water - it turns green in the winter during the rains... but is mostly dirt/brown in the summer. Our sons are of mowing age and they take care of it.

Oh - and the requisite palm trees... this is San Diego after all.

When I lived in Bellingham I had grass with flower beds along the front porch. Grass grew and the only maintenance was mowing it.

When I lived in PA, my front yard was too shady for grass - so I had Hostas and Vinca vines. In the backyard I had grass. I could mow it in about 15 minutes.

Grass makes sense in places there is free water from the sky... not in places you must irrigate it.