How to Create a Low-Maintenance Garden

However keen a gardener you are, a lack of time or mobility may prevent you from spending as much time as you want tending to your plants.

Madingley Mulch supplies a range of products which will cut down on the amount of work your garden requires, from paving slabs to landscape bark. We provide garden supplies to horticulturalists and gardeners in areas including Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Here is our guide to how to create a low-maintenance garden, while at the same time ensuring that it still looks good.

Design Considerations

You can cut down on a lot of the heavy-duty work involved in running a garden by clever use of space. Make sure the plots which will need more work are closest either to the house or the garden shed where the tools are kept. Don’t have a number of small areas with lots of different types of plants in each of them. Features such as an underground irrigation system can help reduce the amount of time you spend watering your plants.

Lay Down Stone Chippings

One popular solution to create a low-maintenance garden is to remove the lawn altogether and replace it with gravel placed over a weed-suppressing membrane. Alternatively, the lawn area can be made smaller so that mowing is less of a chore.

Like mulch, shingle and stone chippings can also help to suffocate weeds and help with the soil drainage. They don’t need any watering or replacing and can help give a much clearer definition to your garden. You can also lay down bigger stones like pebbles and cobbles which form a distinctive landscape feature, are durable and long-lasting, and look just as good in the wet as the dry.

Madingley Mulch supplies a wide range of decorative stone chippings, including gravel, shingle and granite, as well as pebbles and cobbles drawn from beaches in Kent and Scotland. We also stock slate chippings, which look good in gardens with hard landscape features. 

Use Barks and Mulch

Spreading a mulch over the soil can help suppress weed growth and retain moisture in the soil, so it is doubly beneficial as it cuts down on the amount of watering and weeding you need to do.  Mulches can look attractive in themselves, particularly ones like pine bark chippings which Madingley Mulch sell. Although the mulch will eventually need replacing, larger chips like our landscape bark can cover large areas and will take longer to decompose and be fully absorbed into the soil.

Edging and Paving

Edging stones mean you don’t have to spend a long time trimming the edge of your grass for the perfect finish. Also, although patios and paths may require a lot of initial work, once they are laid, then you have years of not having to worry about them and you can use the time saved to enjoy the rest of your garden.

We supply different varieties of paving slabs, depending on the look and texture you are after. Our kerb edging stones are ideal for use on pathways and drives as well as garden borders.

Choose the Right Sort of Plants

Make sure you choose plants which are suitable for your soil, and so will need the minimum amount of care. Try to grow shrubs which require much less maintenance, or are slower-growing, rather than lots of small container pots with different plants. Shrubs like rhododendrons in particular will fill up a lot more space in the garden; you can plant them through a weed-suppressing membrane. 

Madingley Mulch provides a wide variety of products which can help make your life easier in the garden. Based in Cambridge, we deliver edging stones, paving slabs and landscape bark in districts including Saffron Waldon and the surrounding area in Essex, as well as Royston, Huntingdon, Ely and Newmarket.

If you would like advice on how to make your garden easier to maintain, then our friendly staff will be happy to talk to you. We can arrange free delivery of all our products to all addresses within 15 miles of our base.

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