It’s time to start sharing secrets. If you’ve seen the size of our gardens, you probably wonder how we do it. After all, this is a half-acre lot and Mike and I have full-time jobs and a life. I started leaning towards low maintenance gardening several years back. Many parts of our yard are low care or no care. Certainly not all of them. Anything I planted when I first got the gardening bug is high maintenance. We aren’t going to go there today. We will start talking about the areas that are low maintenance, the ones I talked about recently at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show.
Our low maintenance front yard looks beautiful right now. The yellow tulips and pansies catch your eye from the street. When you get closer, purple dominates.
The yellow and red flair tulips don’t count as low maintenance. Sorry. I love ’em, but once they are done blooming, we’ll have to leave them up till they dry out and then cut them back. Ah, but all the little purple flowers that are in there make it fun to walk up the path. The red bench sure gets your attention too. Don’t be afraid of color.
The vinca, or periwinkle, is a flowering groundcover. I like that combo – flowering and groundcover in a plant. The vinca is covered in purple flowers in spring. Though we try really hard to stay away from chemicals, there is one I need in the front yard to keep the area low maintenance. Grass-No-More is a spray that keeps that pesky grass out of my vinca. I tried to do it by hand. It just wasn’t doable with all of the roots intertwined.
Then there’s the scilla. Scilla goes were scilla wants to go. Which is fine with me because when it’s done blooming, it just whoosh, disappears.
The grape hyacinths spread as well. When they are done blooming, they disappear.
The purple and pink lungwort flowers will go as well, but the speckled leaves of the plant will stay.
The rest of the year, the vinca is so much better than grass. For one thing, it will grow under the tree, where shallow roots and shade preclude most anything else from growing. And you don’t have to mow it! Yep, low maintenance.
Stop back again to visit. Low maintenance is going to be a regular theme around here.
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