Time left over for life: A review of The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden

There have been years in which I spent 20 hours a week weeding, planting, watering and pruning in my garden. The garden was ablaze with color, the kitchen sink was filled with vegetables and I would proudly lead guests on a tour—whether they wanted to go or not.

Then there have been other years in which I have spent a fraction of that time tending my garden. In those years the weeds sprouted in paths, roses had blackspot and I prayed for rain when guests were coming so I could cower inside and hide the squalor that was my garden.

So although I love to garden, the appeal of the title The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden was fairly strong for me. After all, life does sometimes intrude on my best intentions and, let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger. My kind of high-maintenance gardening requires stamina. And a strong back.

The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden’s author, Valerie Easton, insists that low-maintenance gardening is not “gardening lite” or the same as overnight gardens installed by housing development ground crews.

New low-maintenance gardens are “easy to live with and live in,” writes Easton. “They’re thoughtful places for outdoor living as well as plants, tailored to the needs of the people who create and use them. New low-maintenance gardens might be rich in flowers for cutting, feature places for kids to play, consist of a few pots or a luscious vegetable garden.”

Easton explains that a truly low-maintenance garden must be guided by an intentional design that incorporates hardscaping as well as plants. Having a plan—and sticking to it—minimizes the time-stresses of haphazard gardening practices that make for more work. That means relinquishing the habit of dragging home every appealing plant from the nursery and spending the rest of the day carrying it around the garden to find it a home.

Other low-maintenance practices Easton advocates are just basic good gardening practices—generously amending the soil, weeding early and often, working with nature by putting the right plant in the right place and practicing good garden sanitation habits. But there are also plenty of other low-maintenance tips that are useful, such as planting closely together to minimize the opportunity for weeds to get a foothold and adopting an acceptance for something short of perfection. Easton also offers plant suggestions and her featured gardeners list their own low-maintenance gardening tips.

Easton lives in Washington State where she writes for the Pacific Northwest Magazine of the Seattle Times. Her West Coast experience is evident since most of the gardens and gardeners featured as low-maintenance examples are in Washington, Oregon and California, slighting us Right Coasters a bit.

Some of the gardens featured rely heavily on hardscaping and accoutrements, with hardly a plant in site. They appear more like architectural examples of outdoor rooms than garden rooms and probably won’t appeal to the people who actually like plants in their gardens.

Fortunately, there are many examples of low-maintenance gardens with gorgeous plant collections. San Francisco designer Jeong Lee’s succulent garden is as sumptuous as it is surprising. David Pfeiffer, a Seattle-based landscape architect, has an enviable kitchen garden that looks anything but low maintenance. The author’s own garden, mixing flowers, greenery and edibles, will also appeal to plant lovers.

The book has extras that make it particularly useful. Garden book hoarders should hide their credit cards before reading because each section in the book is followed with a list of garden book resources. If your budget or shelf space limits your garden book buying inclinations, you’ll be grateful for the list of online resources provided—something many book writers leave out for fear of the websites disappearing.

The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden is ultimately about having a plan that fits with your lifestyle and limitations. Design-a-phobic gardeners should run the other way—fast. This is not the book for you unless you get some garden therapy. But for the rest of us, there are good low-maintenance lessons to take to heart and implement before exhaustion, age or both require tilling under our high-maintenance gardens altogether.

You can reach Robin at gardeningexaminer@gmail.com and can follow her on Twitter at @RobinRipley
 
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