Did you know that over time you may spend more money maintaining your landscape than designing and installing it combined? This is particularly true when a project is installed with minimal thought to maintenance. The fact that you may spend more money maintaining a mediocre garden than something really exciting to come home to also highlights why design is so important. If you are going to spend $10-100,000. maintaining your garden over its lifetime it might as well be something that makes your home functional to live in and beautiful to look at.Thinking about maintenance at the design stage is also important because if you design something, however nice, and it is too expensive or hard to maintain your efforts will be wasted. It will rapidly look overgrown and unattractive.What follows is a fairly comprehensive list of ways you can lower maintenance in each of ten categories maintenance commonly falls under:Watering:- Install a reliable irrigation system using a smart timer. A smart timer can save you 30% off your water bill and means you can forget about your timer year-round.
- Plant plants that require little or no water.
- Mulching and amending soil well will reduce your water bill by 30% by creating conditions that hold water in a natural sponge and protect it from evaporation.
- Utilizing hardscapes with minimal plantings reduces water.
- Using synthetic turf eliminates the need to water lawns.
- Making sure to cover all exposed pipes to protect them from direct sunlight will prolong the life of your system.
- Avoiding the use of ¼” tubing on drip systems and using ½” lines wherever possible dramatically reduces the numbers of drip system leaks and repairs.
Dead-heading flowers:- Smaller, darker flowers tend to be less conspicuous when not dead-headed.
- Avoid large, white flowers such as most Camellias, where the flower stays on the branches as a big brown blob. Sasanqua Camellias are great because they drop their petals to the ground naturally before they fade.
- Use single-petal roses that easily drop their leaves and often have fragrance.
- Some plants, such as Chrysanthemums can be “sheered” with scissors or hedge sheers because the dead flowers are so close together, saving 50% of the time it takes to dead-head by hand.
This text is an excerpt from:
Successfully Landscaping Your Marin Home,
Available on Amazon and Marin Bookstores,
By: Dane E. Rose
(415) 455 9161
For pictures of Marin Landscape Design click HERE.
Designing to Lower Your Maintenance
Mystical Landscapes is a Marin Design and Build
company for all aspects of landscaping.
We also do landscape design Mill Valley, installation and landscape design Corte Madera, installation and landscape design San Rafael, installation and landscape design Novato, installation and landscape design Larkspur, installation and landscape design San Anselmo, and installation and landscape design Tiburon. Marin Landscape Contractor and Marin Landscape Architect. 232 Bungalow Ave San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 455-9161
