I’d venture to say the vast majority of Americans want their home landscape to be “low-maintenance.” Indeed, as low as possible! When I was garden -coaching, at least 95 percent of my clients asked for that.
Which is why I’ve never understood the popularity of perennials, which in my experience are vastly more work than my favorite plant groups for home gardens – shrubs and small trees. Do the perennials have lobbyists and the woodies don’t? Seriously, it’s a mystery to me.
I offer just two examples of such gardens I created and knew to be low-maintenance. Above and below is the landscape along the front of my co-op’s admin building. It’s been transformed from nothing but overgrown Junipers, daffodils and weeds to what you see here:
- Old junipers that now look like bonsai. We removed just the ones too close to the sidewalk and pruned away the dead insides of the rest. (Over the advice of commenters here on the Rant, (at “Can these Junipers be Saved?“) who recommended a clean sweep of them. Now pruned-up, with the trunks visible, the result is so pretty people actually comment on them.
- Two ‘Golden Mop’ Threadleaf False Cypress in front of the Junipers
- Several Ninebark shrubs with reddish-brown leaves and pinkish blooms in spring.
- Several ‘Ogon’ Spireas with chartreuse leaves brighten the border nine months of the year.
- And one very shrub-like perennial – Nepeta.
All these shrubs and the shrub-like perennial are easy-care because they cover a lot of ground, don’t spread, and need that one trim. No deadheading. Most are fast-growing, too.
These plants alone would be a vast improvement over what passes for borders around too many suburban homes, right? It just takes choosing a few good shrubs and the patience to wait the 3-5 years until they fill out nicely like these have.
Except for the pink Ninebark flowers, this stunning color combination lasts most of the season.
Now admittedly I didn’t stop with shrubs and Nepeta alone. These beds contain dozens of Black-eyed Susans, white Echinaceas and Butterfly Weed, as well as groundcover Sedums. The Susans are the most trouble because they spread like thugs but they hey! They were free, they’re cheerful and also Maryland’s State Flower.
My goal for this garden (which I officially adopted under the co-op’s adopt-a-common-area program) was to make it not just pretty but easy enough that staff could take care of it if I couldn’t – maybe I’ll get too old. hope I’ll have time to leave extensive notes!
The other example is the garden that I developed over 26 years in Takoma Park, Md. I’m forever grateful that when I moved there in 1985 I had the good sense to hire a nursery-based design and install team to clear brush and plant dozens of shrubs I’d never heard of around the perimeter of the back yard. Truly I could name the azaleas but nothing else.
I was particularly leery of the six or so Viburnums chosen for this site by the designer – they looked pathetic in their pots at the nursery. I remember asking her about them: “Are you sure?” And she promised I’d eventually love them – so prescient!
In this view there are also several Pieris japonica and a Deodor cedar.
In this view of the side border you can see the informal hedge of Cherry Laurels that were installed for me way back then, plus a dogwood and a Hydrangea ‘Tardiva.’ The perennials and bulbs in front of all those boring mostly evergreens add color, interest, and lots more maintenance.
Now from the Wayback Machine comes a photo of the rear of the house with, unfortunately, yours truly posing cheekily in front of it. Taken my first year there, it shows that I’d done nothing yet but build a tiny deck off the house. I’m sure you’ll agree that that cinder block retaining wall and the thorny barberries above it all had to go.
So the retaining wall got removed, the deck got much bigger, and again mostly shrubs filled the border, along with a collection of Astilbe. The shrubs at the back are a shorter variety of Cherry Laurels, with Hydrangeas and Spireas in front of them.
The high-maintenance item here and in this entire garden, back and front, is that damn Kiwi vine you see on the deck. I complained to anyone who would listen that it would eat my house if I didn’t keep hacking it back. Sadly, that hacking back also prevented the production of berries, so I complained about that, too.
Hey, I just noticed something else in this photo – the garden still had a lawn (though not for long) but it was largely covered in clover. Looks fine, right? I just had to remember not to venture onto it barefoot, lest my neighbors hear obscenity-laced screams from my direction.
As I get older, shrubs are the way to go. People just have no patience to wait 3-5 years, and maybe no imagination.
I’m just in from a day of shade bed weeding for a client (thousands of red maple seedlings, 6 or 7 multi-stem red maples ) & soil problem solving. In other words, grubby and a tad brain dead. Still, it was worth reading this before I do anything else, including shower & feed my kids. (teenagers!).
I may come back to crowd source what to do with the ailing juniper we inherited with the house. It’s a half-assed 1970’s evergreen tier separating the slope of upper front lawn & the lawn proper (septic field). Some of the original dieback zones that suddenly showed up after a snowless winter 2 years ago seemed to recover, but other sections are at the “If I pull the grass, there will be no green left,” stage.
More amusing to distract myself with decisions about whether to leave nightshade jutting out next to a blackberry stem, or the Dame’s Rocket. I mean, how invasive is invasive, really?
Coming from the Prairies I have to disagree that shrubs are lower maintenance than perennials. Chinook winds are hard on woody plants over the winter so lots of tip kill. As well there is a lot of dead wood and thinning maintenance that needs doing frequently which with larger shrubs becomes increasingly challenging. As I get older my aching shoulders are telling me it’s time to change strides and go for smaller easier looked after plants such as perennials.
I wish my energy and strength (at 56) matched my plant lust. I love shrubs, but also love the cottage garden look and love having a wide variety of plants in my front garden. As the years go by, though, I may have to simplify, and shrubs are a fantastic choice. I have to say, though, that those ugly gold false cypresses are everywhere. If I don’t see another one ever again, it’d be too soon. Other than that, I love all of the other plants/shrubs.
The thing I learned about shrubs is that the size on the label is a LIE. They keep growing. The maximum size on the tag is at 10 years. Do they think we all re do our gardens? Sigh, A lot of people do. It keeps the nurseries and landscapers in business.
I planted green thread leaf false cypresses for a border. The max size was shown 6 by 8. They became monsters. I picked up a 1947 US Forestry publication on trees and the lumber industry at a used bookstore. There was my “shrub” listed, same Latin name, with a mature height of 60′. They are gone, replaced with something equally high pruning maintenance, common lilacs, which sucker like hell. I never learn.
I completely agree! I’m for shrubs all the way. Layered with whatever else you like, bulbs, perennials, creeping ground covers, while you wait for them to mature a little. There are so many that do stay a reasonable size, or can be easily kept that way, at least for my zone 8: dwarf fothergilla, many hydrangeas, abelia, hoogendorn holly, and a new favorite this year Rosa’s dwarf ornamental blueberry.
I love shrubs too and their usually low maintenance qualities. I also have a kiwi vine that would swallow the whole yard & street if I ignored it for a few weeks. It has become very HIGH maintenance !! It may have to go soon. Sigh.
I love natives. Native and grown somewhere in my area. I love anything viburnum, and as long as a parent was native, I’ll take a hybrid. I love buckeyes, bottlebrush, Red Buckeye, and the Ohio Buckeye tree. I’m not fond of turf grass, slowly but surely we’re carving more and more away. I garden for wildlife, I also garden for butterflies. They love buttonbush, and they love butterfly weed, ironweed and Joe-Pye-weed….anything with weed…hahaa There’s a few blueberries that are native, raspberry too. Those are for our pleasure! My wild cherry tree will fruit for the first time this year! This is our 4th year in this home and I’m not done yet, probably never will be. Too much turf grass left, poor hubby has to mow…lol I love planting trees and shrubs that will fruit or have nuts, and I love planting species that are butterfly or moth host plants. BTW, I love clover, it’s a sign your soil is healthy.
All-shrub plantings do not a garden make.
Susan’s title is a bit misleading-since the examples she shows are not all-shrub, but mostly shrub. That quibble aside, how can all-shrub gardens really be the lowest-maintenance gardens, when they need so much more water, chemicals and trimming to keep them looking smart than perennials that need a single cut back at Valentines Day and division once in a while, if only to share with friends?
If more home gardeners increased the percentage of native and adapted perennials compared to shrubs, we would all benefit from the resulting water conservation and a decrease in the appalling amount of landscape chemicals now leaching out into the watershed.
Aiming for lowest-maintenance is aiming very low indeed.
This comment was such a surprise, I guess I’m still thinking about it. It’s certainly the opposite of my experience over 40 years that shrubs need “much more water, chemicals and trimming” than perennials. The only shrubs I’ve ever had to water after they’ve become established are hydrangeas. I’ve never sprayed a shrub with anything, nor fed them. Trimming time is roughly equal in my experience for shrubs and perennials.
And i wouldn’t call low maintenance a low bar at all – it’s the equivalent of “self-sustaining,” and “low-input,” which we all recognize as good attributes.
I’ll have more coming soon about the importance of shrubs and what they brings to gardens that perennials don’t..
So many thoughts, both on the original post and the comments.
The college I work at asked me to get rid of 50% of the shrubs, because we don’t have the staff to maintain the shrubs. They don’t want low maintenance, they want no maintenance. All they want is grass to mow. *sigh*
I envy your ability to grow viburnums. We do have a native viburnum here in Texas, Viburnum rufidulum, aka Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum, but it’s slow, and hard to get going. Once it does, it’s beautiful! Other viburnums suffer with our black clay soil and heat.
If your Deodar Cedar grows as big as they do here, it’ll eat the rest of your shrubs.
No plant “needs” chemicals – people want perfection, thus use chemicals to achieve their vision of perfection. I haven’t used chemicals in my yard for over 20 years, and I have roses, a few shrubs, and lots of perennials. And some turf, which I’d love to eliminate, but DH says no.
And I agree about plant labels. Whoever writes the info on plant labels should win a fiction award. lol
Yes, shrubs do require a bit of pruning know-how, which most crews don’t have.