Sometimes, it’s not until you have to pass up a social gathering with friends to mow your lawns that you realise your yard maintenance is taking over. All your free time can be taken up by lawn mowing, gardening, hedge trimming, and other tasks, just to make sure you’re still able to use your yard and keep it tidy.

There is more to homeownership than trimming shrubs and edging lawns. Take back control of your weekends by following these steps to achieve a more relaxing, low-maintenance yard.

Step 1: Outsource Maintenance

Your time is precious, and the last thing most people want to be doing after spending 40 hours in the office is spending even more time tending to their properties. If you’d prefer to spend more time enjoying your space rather than maintaining it, outsource as many outdoor-related tasks as possible.

Hire someone to mow your lawns, get rid of garden waste, and trim your trees. You can even outsource the task of fruit tree care, hedge trimming, water blasting, and gardening. More and more people are seeing the value in hiring people to help with their homes, and now might be the right time for you to take the same action.

Step 2: Downsize the Gardens

Property trends are changing all the time, and one of the more recent ones relates to the size of your gardens. While extensive, sprawling gardens are beautiful to look at, they take a lot of time and effort to maintain.

Rather than sitting on your deck relaxing with a beverage and a book, you have to be ankle-deep in soil, pulling out weeds and making sure your prized peonies are growing perfectly. You deserve a more relaxing, low-maintenance yard, and reducing the size of your garden may be how you do that.

Turning gardens back into grass can require a significant amount of effort, but it’s a one-off amount of effort. You then only have to worry about lawn mowing, which is a task you can pay someone to do for you, anyway.

Step 3: Focus On Hardscapes

Hardscapes are built environment structures incorporated into a landscape. They include retaining walls, stairs, walkways, paved areas, and similar, and often contain materials like concrete, stone, and wood.

While you may like to welcome nature with open arms, having a balance of hardscapes can mean you don’t have to undertake as much weeding, gardening, and lawn mowing, as you would if you didn’t incorporate these hardscape features.

Install large patio areas, pathways, and retaining walls that can function as controlled gardens. More and more people are seeing the value in hardscapes, particularly holiday homeowners who can’t shoot away to their holiday destination to mow lawns and pull up weeds each week.

Step 4: Choose Your Plants Carefully

Whether you purchased your property as a blank slate or you inherited the gardens of a previous owner, it’s worth putting a lot of thought into the plants you keep on your property. Some are more low maintenance than others.  

Flaxes and grasses tend to be among the most popular options, particularly as they grow in the toughest of environments and require minimal care. Succulents are also preferred for their beauty and basic needs. 

You might also decide to choose a variety of ground cover plants. These can prevent water loss and erosion while also covering bare soil that may otherwise give weeds somewhere to grow. Some of the most popular varieties include New Zealand Daphne that grows in clay soil, Tinkerbell that grows in clumps, and Star Jasmine that can provide dense coverage in a dedicated part of your garden.

Step 5: Make Small Changes

Making drastic changes to your property for the sake of more relaxation and less maintenance can be overwhelming. Rather than getting started, you may be tempted to do nothing at all and just put up with your predicament.

However, small changes may make a world of difference. For example, you might add weed mat material to a garden bed to prevent weed growth, or replace a small garden bed with potted plants, instead. Ripping out high-maintenance plants and replacing them with lower maintenance varieties may also be something you consider.

Over time, these tiny changes may make a noticeable difference, especially when you have one less item on your list of chores to do on the weekend.

Enjoy Your Yard Sooner Rather Than Later

By hiring lawn care experts, adding more hardscapes, and downsizing your gardens, you may be in a much better position to enjoy your garden rather than seeing it as a labour-intensive chore. Take these five steps above, and you may be surprised by how much free time on weekends and evenings you and your loved ones end up having.