If you spend every weekend sweating in your yard taking care of your new landscaping, you’re not doing it right.
What’s the point of that welcoming hammock strung between two palm trees beneath twinkling lights if all you do is gaze at it longingly?
New plan: What’s the easiest landscape to take care of? How do you landscape your yard for low maintenance?
Let’s learn more about low-maintenance landscape design in Orlando & Central Florida, including:
Many low-maintenance landscaping ideas exist, such as easy drip irrigation for your planters, low-maintenance tropical plants, planting strategies that promote low maintenance, and using hardscape in your landscape design.
Read on to learn more.
Which tropical plants don't require any maintenance? Hmmm. Plastic ones. Any growing thing requires some maintenance.
However, there are low-maintenance plants in Florida, including native plants, which automatically thrive here and need less care.
Ground Source landscape designer Eric Frisch shares his list of favorite easy-care plants:
Planters brimming with colorful Croton look great out there. But watering them all by hand cuts into your hammock time.
Switch them to drip irrigation. It’s an easy addition to your low-maintenance landscape design in Orlando and Central Florida, where container plants need frequent watering.
Container drip irrigation uses small hoses pierced with tiny holes that allow small quantities of water to trickle slowly into your planters’ soil.
The hoses run through the bottoms of your planters and tie into your irrigation system. Tiny emitters connected to the tubes water your plants.
Bonus: this water wizardry uses less water than you crouching out there in your robe pouring water into your planters, because the water is applied directly to the plants. There’s no water waste.
It’s healthier for your plants, too, preventing the wet leaves that encourage fungal diseases.
We’re going out on a limb here, and assuming you’d rather be sipping a drink in your hammock than precariously balancing on a ladder wielding a big pair of shears. Call us crazy.
Choosing self-cleaning palms is a smart strategy for low-maintenance landscape design in Orlando & Central Florida, where palms are a landscape staple.
A self-cleaning palm means that the older, dead palm fronds will fall away from the trunk on their own once the tree no longer needs nutrition from them — no need for pesky pruning.
Palms that aren’t self-cleaning require occasional pruning to remove the brown fronds after they die.
There’s not a huge list of self-cleaning palm trees that thrive in Central Florida, but these three are the best bets:
Quick note: All these self-cleaning palms tend to be sensitive to cold, which makes them a bit risky for Northern Orlando.
When you think of mass planting, beauty comes to mind before maintenance. Thirty stunning blue daze plants will knock your sandals off.
Filling a landscape space with large numbers of the same plant packs a powerful design punch. Bonus: Mass planting is a great strategy for low-maintenance landscape design.
Taking care of a big group of the same type of plant is easier than meeting the needs of several different plants. They all need the same attention, from water to fertilizer to cutting back or pruning. A dense mass of plants also leaves less room for pesky weeds to sneak in.
Everybody loves to feel at home, including your plants.
Before you get all excited about packing your yard with plants, look around. Is it sunny? Mostly shady? Is your soil sandy? Or kind of sticky with clay?
Choose plants that are well-suited to your outdoor space to help them thrive. They’ll need less water, fertilizer, and pruning than plants struggling to grow where you think they’ll look nice, but the conditions just don’t suit them.
What’s the most manageable landscape to take care of? One giant paver patio.
OK, you probably want a few plants, too. But hard materials like pavers and stone need much less attention than sod and plants. It makes them a natural for low-maintenance landscape design.
You should just sweep them off occasionally, keep the weeds under control (more about that in a minute), and pressure wash them occasionally.
A couple of ways to boost hardscape’s low-maintenance potential even more:
Use polymeric sand between pavers to deter weeds. Unlike regular sand, it’s bound with polymers that cause it to harden after it’s swept into the joints and sprayed with water. That makes it more challenging for weeds to take root.
Don’t skip the sealer. It’s not a one-time thing. Sealer needs to be applied to paver features every couple of years to help keep them low-maintenance, deter weeds, ants and dirt and protect your hardscape from weather.
Mulch works way harder than it looks.
Sure, it seems like it’s just laying there, looking brown, but it’s retaining soil moisture, protecting your plants, and discouraging weeds. That all means less work for you.
Keep a 2- to 3-inch-deep layer of mulch on plant beds, then let it work for you.
Just thinking about watering your landscaping takes the fun out of lounging in your hammock. If you don’t water enough, all your pretty stuff dies.
How are you supposed to know exactly how much to water? It can be complicated. Different trees, shrubs, and plants on your property often have different water needs. And your lawn has its own water requirements. Changing watering restrictions play a part, too.
Let your irrigation system do the work. Smart irrigation timers work with your controller to give everything just the right amount of water, based on your lawn’s needs, your plants’ needs, and the current weather.
Smart irrigation systems let you devise custom watering schedules. Your lawn and plants will be happy and healthy. You won’t waste water or money.
A lot is going on out there. Trying to coordinate all your landscaping needs isn’t exactly low maintenance.
If you’re hiring separate companies to handle your sod installation, your irrigation, and your hardscape projects, you’re dealing with a lot of unnecessary stress.
When one full-service landscaping company handles all your landscaping needs, from innovative landscape design to expert sod installation to seasonal lawn cleanup to irrigation, it’s way easier on you.
Irrigation system leak? Need a new paver patio? Time for new sod?
You know who to call for landscape maintenance and design in Orlando & Central Florida.
Then, relax and hit the hammock.
We’re landscape design experts, but our skills don’t stop there. We’re with you every step of the way as you plan your perfect outdoor space.
Sod, irrigation, landscape design: Let us transform your yard from an embarrassing eyesore to a place you spend every spare minute.
Are you ready to enjoy the vibrant, impressive yard you've always wanted? Request a quote today! We’ll help you review your options and then transform your property.