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Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard

Formal gardens designs often take additional care, including frequent pruning.

Back yards come in all shapes and sizes – and all degrees of maintenance. Before you start laying out your garden design, think about how much time you want to spend taking care of all those wonderful plantings once they’re in your yard.

Does a Saturday of puttering around your garden, pruning hedges and edging beds sound relaxing and peaceful, or does your ideal weekend revolve around sitting quietly on the patio and reading a good book? Do you look forward to donning garden gloves and pulling out a shovel, or would you opt to enlist the help of a professional? Once you’ve decided how many hours a week (or month) you’d like to spend maintaining your landscape, let that guide you in defining the scope of your project and creating your planting scheme.

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Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard

Always check the plant care tags attached to your purchased plants. They cite useful selection and care information to help you determine if the plant is appropriate for your garden.

Low-maintenance plantings are typically more naturalistic than formal ones. They feature natural areas of shrubs and trees and expanses of easy-care groundcovers. These landscapes contain native plants or species that are well-adapted to the climate. This reduces labor because well-adapted plants need little coddling and tend to stay healthier than those that struggle to survive in incompatible conditions.

When planning for an easy-care garden, don’t forget to consider the mature height and spread of each tree and shrub. This way you won’t have to worry about pruning your plants as they grow to keep size under control. For example, a low-maintenance garden might include a mass of dwarf heavenly bamboo planted below a living room window. Even when the bamboo reaches maturity, its dwarf size won’t block the view from inside the house.

If you’re on the other end of the spectrum and relish every bit of daylight for the time it gives you to garden, you might follow many low-maintenance landscape principles but give yourself some challenges. Perhaps create a topiary, grow a shrub that needs extra winter protection or maintain a formal hedge. Whatever type of garden you choose, it’s important to match your capabilities and availability with the maintenance needs of your future landscape.