In my recent post covering Henry Mitchell’s advice about lawns and alternatives thereto, I promised to next share his ideas on designing gardens for lower maintenance, also from The Essential Earthman starting at page 79. He introduces the topic: “The saving of time and labor in the garden is not important if you have an endless supply of both, but many gardeners find themselves unable to keep it all together, as you might say.”
So he has suggestions, especially for medium-sized gardens – up to 1/2 acre – where the gardener has to do it all him or herself. Because size matters: “In big gardens there simply has to be plenty of labor, and in tiny places, 30 by 30 feet, there’s not enough to do.” I’ve illustrated Mitchell with photos of home gardens I’ve visited.
Lawn Edging
“If there is lawn, do not let the grass run up to the edge of rose beds or any other place where hand-trimming will be necessary for a neat effect. Instead, let the lawn come up a grade-level band of stone or concrete so that on the last lap the mower rests partly on the lawn and partly on the stone.”
This border is nicely defined, but the stones don’t make mowing easy.
Easier to mow along, though not quite what Mitchell had in mind.
Reduce Edging with Wide Borders
“Have as few edges to things as possible. Narrow beds have a disproportionate amount of edging; therefore a border 14 feet wide and 100 feet long (with stepping stones to get at things) is easier than a number of small beds separated by brick or grass paths.”
Probably too much edging maintenance for Mitchell.
Paths
“Have no more paths than truly necessary. One path, six feet wide, is best. If it is brick, it should be set in mortar. If it is flagstone, it should be set in mortar. The inexperienced person has no conception at all how many hours can be spent weeding pavement that is not set in concrete and grouted with mortar.
“And while on this subject, take pains with the color of the mortar. White mortar between brick, fieldstone, slate and so on looks awful…. Gravel is absurd. It rarely looks good, is never comfortable, and is ideal for weeds and masochists.”
I bet we can all agree that weeding between pavers is a slog! Also, gravel IS absurd!
Gravel can look pretty cool, but low-maintenance it’s not.
Rock Gardens
“Avoid intensive care projects. Nothing known to man equals a rock garden for labor. Incredibly enough, I have twice seen rock gardens advocated as labor-saving devices, but this only proves that human perversity is boundless. Nothing in all gardening requires so much work for so little return as a rock garden. If the gardener wants lewisias and saxifrages and other rock plants, he should struggle with them in tubs or raised borders, not in a rock garden.”
I love “human perversity is boundless.”
Greenhouses
“Greenhouses may be nice (usually they are a total mess) but the labor of keeping them is substantial….[examples given]. A greenhouse can be endlessly rewarding, but the gardener should be certain he really wants one, and if he really does, then it should be as large as possible, not as small as possible.”
The Right Plants
“Avoid plants that necessarily involve many hours’ labor a year. Irises and roses, to name two, must be hand-weeded and sprayed.
“Wide borders with shrubs (smoke bushes, fringe trees, small plums, pink locusts, mahonias, nandinas, photinias, small junipers or yews or box, hybrid rugosa roses, Japanese maples, azaleas, blueberries, viburnums) and clumps of bulbs like daffodils and tulips; perennials like peonies, Japanese anemonies, baptisias, artemisias, poppies, and so on and on, are less work than borders of annuals or borders of those numerous perennials that must be staked, lifted, replanted every year or two. Hostas, yuccas, and wormwoods of various sorts are also superb, trouble-free creatures. Before planting anything, ask yourself if you will need to stake it, tie it, prune it, spray it, and weigh its beauty against your real commitment to it. Often, one would really prefer peonies.”
It’s interesting to see which shrubs and perennials he recommended (published in 1982), especially citing peonies as low-maintenance. Did he never have to stake his?
Who thinks these peony-packed borders are low maintenance?
Good Foliage
“Gravitate always to plants that have good foliage when not in bloom. Irises, for example, have terrible foliage in summer. The handsomer the foliage of a plant, the less work in making the garden look good.”
Good tip!
Lily Ponds. Really?
“Consider a water lily pool as large as possible. Dollar for dollar and hour for hour of maintenance, the garden lily pool is the best investment of all. But never start such projects without reading books…”
Okay, but suggesting any pond as a low-maintenance design feature seems crazy to me.
Architecture, especially Benches
“The smaller the garden and the less labor available, the more important the architecture, like a wood bench of first-rate honesty and solidity…A good place to sit in the garden is worth having, and it will count strongly in the design, far more than the frumpy ornaments sometimes acquired.” Agree!
Shapes and Colors
“Keep all outlines bold, over-scaled, plain, rectangular, and keep to gray, black, earth color, except in chairs, if you like to spend 50 hours a year painting them. White leaps out in the garden, but if you like the effect (and in other people’s gardens it can look great) of white fences, white furniture, be prepared to paint.”
I agree with “bold, over-scaled and plain” but rectangular, instead of curves?
An example of straight lines and rectangular shapes in a San Francisco garden. Not great for mowing, and to my eyes, a distraction.
That’s better.
It’s odd that Mitchell advised avoiding growing irises because of the weeding. (I must have blocked this from my mind 2hen I read it.). He himself was so into irises that he bred them for a time. And he wrote of taking a week’s vacation once during iris season so he could spend his time watching them open, etc.
Always nice to revisit Henry Mitchell’s writings, even if we question some of his 40 year old opinions. Good rant!
Did you read Dana Milbank’s column today on insects? He may have redeemed himself a bit after that misguided column on exclusively native plants in the landscape.
Yes to Milbank’s latest! Good column, with minimal shaming.
After reading your previous entry, I got Mitchell’s Essential Earthman out of the library and read it with delight. So many pearls of wisdom, filled with funny and well-phrased quips, as well as perhaps outdated information. I loved the expression that something (I forget now what he was lamenting, fingernails, I believe) looked like the girls of Santa Barbara had exchanged tennis for macrame! Delightfully outdated! But his love of irises is infectious, and I totally agree with him about gladiolus. Thank you for introducing his writing to us!
I’m a big fan of Mitchell’s books and his writing is like therapy for me, but lily pools? Mucking out a small pond is not on my list of chores I want to do each year, but I’ll keep reaching for those books. He’s a treasure.
I’ve not read Mitchell, so I can’t make a fair judgement. My immediate impression is that in reading these snippets, I’m losing the joy of it all. Also, in practice I’ve found more labor in weeding my grandmother’s peonies than in weeding her iris. Also, gravel gardens done to modern standards can be very low maintenance. I’ll give him a chance to woo me on other things, but so far I think we’ve moved on from this what at first glance seems a rigid outlook. Glad you shared this. I’m always curious about the gardeners who came before us.
Curves.. yes.. These photos were lovely to look at. And I agree with the comment about white.. no white mortar for sure.. I keep to gray, teal, copper and black for decorations, planters. The mortar issue is true for brick homes too. No white! Mine is a creamy colour. That’s the colour of trim too, except for the teal shutters, etc. Now that i mention shutters.. It is amazing to me how many homes have double windows with shutters on the ends of the windows. Wrong. Even if a shutter doesn’t close, it should be there as if it Could close.
Is edging one of the very worst sights in a garden? Most versions give me the horrors.
Gravel is good. Without it we would have had no paths! Ours came with the ‘dust’ which solidified it – see https://gardenrant.com/2022/10/how-to-do-garden-paths-or-not.html.
We’ll all date just as conclusively. He sounds as opinionated as me and it’s a great confrontation.
As we age and can’t do it all, we’ll have to pick our poison, weeding or edging? You can hire mow and blow companies to edge. Don’t know of any that you could trust to weed.
Curves or straight borders? In a small city lot constrained by the lines of structures, streets, drives, and sidewalks, curves can looked forced.
I love Mitchell but he’s bold in suggesting a 14′ x 100′ border as do-able in the mid-Atlantic or southeast USA. Easily fun in the spring, but will be brutal in the summer heat and humidity. If you slack off, or go on vacation for a week, your usual 3 hours of work, for example, will be 6 hours when you return from your restorative week off. He shouldn’t be so hard on rock gardens. Yes, the annual weeds can be a chore, but a little rock garden is possible, although I doubt Mitchell ever grew lewisias successfully in suburban Washington. Susan, thank you for your two-week series on Henry Mitchell.
I love Henry Mitchell and own all of his books, but I definitely disagree with some of his low-maintenance dictums. For example, his recommended plants: Cotinus is fine if you plan to let it grow unchecked forever, but if not, I’d like to see him face up to a 10-ft-tall x 6-ft-wide specimen and cut it to the ground every year. Which is what needs to be done in order to keep it to a manageable size. And whoever would call a Japanese maple a “shrub”?!? Sorry, Henry, these are trees with a capital T. Japanese anemones are fine if you are okay with them overrunning and swallowing everything in sight. Although I agree that bearded iris foliage looks dreadful in summer, Siberian iris foliage does not. That said, both are going to need division one fine day.
Ironically, I don’t find my peonies to be labor-intensive at all. In early spring I install peony rings (the kind that open and shut, and can be raised or lowered) on a stake next to each one, and don’t give them another thought until November when I remove the rings. But then again, I only have 11 herbaceous peonies; the other three are tree peonies which I don’t need to stake/ring.
As always, Henry knew best. Except for the peonies; nothing easier or more carefree in Kansas. Mow them off in the fall, add a peony hoop in the spring, and the bountiful rewards are evident. Just pick the right ones!