Gardening and landscaping are very rewarding and enjoyable hobbies, and the result of your hard work is a beautiful way to improve the exterior of your home. It’s a very time-consuming hobby to have; not everybody is home enough to keep up with weeding, watering, trimming, and so on.
Luckily, there are ways to let your garden take care of itself with little input from you. It’s called low maintenance landscaping, and it’s a lifesaver.
| IMAGE | PRODUCT | FEATURES | PRICE |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Drip Irrigation Kit | • Package Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 2.8 inches; 1.65 Pounds • Plant Watering Device • Plant Water Pump Timer Tool | |
 | Rolling Lawn Aerator | • protective shield • easy to aerate soil • creates small holes to enable air | |
 | Garden Hoe | • DIRT DIGGING MACHINE • CUTS FROM ANY ANGLE • BALANCED WEIGHT | |
 | Garden Trowel | • DIG, PLANT & TURN SOIL • BRIGHT GREEN COLOR • OVERSIZED CAST-ALUMINUM BLADE |
There are tools available to help you get started with low maintenance landscaping. Some of them require a little bit of setup while others just provide aid in creating a low maintenance landscape.
Here are the 4 best tools for low maintenance landscaping:
- Drip irrigation kit
- Rolling lawn aerator
- Garden hoe
- Garden Trowel
- More on xeriscape landscaping
Drip Irrigation Kit
The first tool you need to get for low maintenance landscaping is a drip irrigation kit.
Drip irrigation is a way to water your garden plants without having to do any hard work or maintenance. Drip irrigation kits come with a long hose that you either set on the ground around your plants or bury underneath them.
The hose slowly and evenly releases water to the plants through holes or drippers along the sides of the tube. It’s pretty inexpensive to purchase one of these kits, and it’s a great way to keep up with garden maintenance if you’re away from home most of the day.
The drip irrigation kit pictured above is one that’s meant to run along on top of the ground rather than buried. It’s a lot less noticeable if you bury the hose rather than place it since it’s out of sight. It looks more professional that way.
Rolling Lawn Aerator
Lawn aerators puncture holes into the ground to allow water and roots to come in contact with each other easier.
Aerating your lawn before fertilizing and planting will make them grow faster and live longer. Plants are able to absorb more nutrients from the ground, so it results in a lower level of maintenance on the garden.
You have the option of hiring someone to aerate the lawn for you, or you can buy a rolling lawn aerator and do it yourself, which is much cheaper.
Once you aerate your lawn, let the rainwater and soil do its work and then seed it, fertilize it, and plant flowers. It won’t look amazing at first, but you’ll love the resulting landscape that grows from it.
Using a rolling lawn aerator can get exhausting and makes it seem like you’re doing high maintenance, not low maintenance. It’s important to remember that the biggest aspect of low maintenance landscaping is that you put a decent amount of work into the initial setup and then, in turn, little maintenance is needed for any future upkeep.
Garden Hoe
Garden hoes do a lot more than you think. It’s an ancient tool that can be used for modern types of landscaping.
When it comes to low maintenance landscaping, weeds can be a pain when they grow in your garden. There are ways to prevent weeds from sprouting so that you don’t have to pull them often.
Chemical weed killers and germicides aren’t always a good idea because they can potentially harm your lawn. Use a garden hoe to scrap out any plant remains or weeds from the soil before planting new flowers; this will make it take longer for weeds to grow.
Garden Trowel
A garden trowel is the most essential landscaping tool you need. You will use it to plant new flowers or to move them, if necessary.
You can use a trowel to create a low maintenance setup in your garden.
If you plan ahead and organize your landscape by the water and sunlight of plants, they will end up needing less water and less attention. But they will thrive more than randomly placed plants.
This process is called xeriscape landscaping; it’s the mother of all low maintenance landscaping and can cut your garden maintenance practically in half. It’s amazing what a simple little shovel can do to save you time and money.
More on Xeriscape Landscaping
We wanted to go a little more in-depth on how to use xeriscape landscaping to your advantage since it really is the key to low maintenance landscaping. Xeriscaping not only reduces the amount of water you use, but it also keeps your plants healthy and happy.
Through xeriscaping, you may have plants with similar water needs grouped together and separated from plants that only need the occasional watering. As a result, less water is wasted on flowers and vegetations that don’t need it.
Xeriscape landscaping is all about planning. Planning, planning, and more planning.
Your first step is to test and prepare your soil. Test the pH level and find out what type of fertilizer you should use, or if you need to use fertilizer at all.
Also, do some research on the contents that make up the natural soil in your region, this can tell you what plants will grow the best in it and how much extra water they will need. You can use mulch to conserve water as well. Another thing you should try is to aerate the ground.
The next step is to select your flowers, shrubs, and other plants. Selection should be based on several aspects: annual or perennial, drought or frost tolerance, water needs, sunlight needs, and shade needs.
When you plan the placement of everything, put flowers that need lots of shade together in a partially shaded area so that they’ll grow well; do the same with plants that need full sunlight.
To successfully create a xeriscaped landscape, learn the ins and outs of your soil and your climate.
Setting up a low maintenance landscape shouldn’t be hard; that’s why many tools and online help has been offered to those seeking to create a luxurious garden without all the work. Use this to your advantage and know that the results will be more than satisfactory.