Creating a Low Maintenance Lawn and Garden in Victoria BC

A beautiful aesthetically pleasing lawn and garden is a highly desired aspect of property ownership. Not only does it increase your property values, the presence of such beauty and elegance improves your quality of life. However, if such landscaping becomes high maintenance, it can become a drain on your wallet and on your life. Here are some suggestions on how we can try to have the best of both worlds.

Paver Edging

Keeping Mulch from Grass and Vice Versa

Having your lawn and garden divided into separate well defined spaces is an essential part of any landscape design. It enhances definition of different areas and landscapes and creates order. Having proper edging also keeps materials such as mulch, gravel, and soils from mixing and cross contaminating. A variety of materials can be used for such a task. Some use plastic edgers, some use metal ones, but we recommend using paver bricks. Paver bricks when properly set on a prepared surface will be less prone to shifting than plastic or metal edges. Because they are disjointed rather than one solid piece, there’s more flexibility in the overall structure. A paver brick is able to offer a solid, defined, border that is pleasing to the eye while at the same time allowing a lawnmower to get right up to the edge. The flat smooth surface means the wheels of a lawnmower can ride on it if necessary without it slipping. Being able to mow as one normally would means no extra maintenance required. Having a solid edge structure means not having to reset and redo the space as it shifts over time.

Avoid Large Bushes

Hedge Trimming with a ladder

Any bushes with a height over your head will become increasingly difficult to trim and prune. This includes large hedges that require ladders and specialized tools to trim, often multiple times a year. While a large hedge wall may seem attractive from a distance, what you don’t see are the maintenance headaches that come with such a large garden feature. If you want something that is easy to trim, easy to maintain, keep hedges and bushes to neck height and below. Be sure to take into account future growths as well.

Avoid Non-Native Plants

It doesn’t take a horticulturist to tell you that invasive species can quickly turn into a massive weed problem in your lawn and garden. The most common ones are bamboo, English ivy, and blackberry bushes. All three can go from a nice garden feature to a sprawling infestation in just a couple of years. All three often will require heavy machinery to remove once they’ve become established, which can be as fast as just a few years. If you don’t want to be constantly trimming back blackberry brambles, pulling up English ivy vines, or digging up sprawling bamboo roots, avoid planting these and other non native plants.

Keeping Your Lawn Healthy

Somewhat contrary to common sense, the more healthy your lawn is, the less maintenance one has to do. This is because a healthy lawn will keep out undesirable elements like weeds from taking hold. This means doing simple things like fertilizing and aeration, both of which can be done by yourself with some equipment from Home Depot. Having a good mix of grass types including having clovers is also beneficial in keeping out weeds as well as keeping soils healthy. This in turn means less work from you as nature works in sustaining itself. And of course having a basic irrigation system will go a long way in keeping your lawns and gardens in good shape and minimizing maintenance, especially with computerized control systems.

Final Thoughts

Above are some simple ideas on keeping your lawn and garden low maintenance. These are great because they have negligible effects on cost and time while having excellent outcomes in terms of reducing yard maintenance. There are other methods and strategies of course but these are the most common that we’ve seen in Victoria BC.