Low-maintenance garden designs are one of the best ways to achieve a rewarding and relaxing outdoor haven with little expense and hassle.
Whether you have a traditional-inspired landscape or a small, contemporary utopia, there are several garden plans you can use to create a breathtaking flower garden that won’t need a great deal of effort to maintain.
The following are some low-maintenance flower gardens that have piqued our interest and that we would love to share with you to help you pick the best designs, techniques, and plants for a low-maintenance garden perfect for your outdoors.
Take a look!
1. Bistro Garden
Designate a corner in your backyard and use this garden design for a chic conversation area with a display of brightly colored flowers.
The low-care, high-impact garden plan features various blooming favorites like woodland phlox, portulaca (moss rose), and salvias and will keep your yard looking marvelous even through heat waves.
2. Inspire with a Desert Look
Being conscious of water is critical if you live in an arid region. Choose drought-tolerant plants that thrive in your local climate to minimize water use and related maintenance.
Filled with heat- and drought-tolerant plants like ball cacti, agave, and aloe, you need not worry about dragging a hose around with this garden design in your yard. The rustic raised bed creates a lovely layered garden plan.
3. Soften the Curves
A curvy walkway provides an ideal opportunity to incorporate low-maintenance garden designs that are lush and full of life.
Hydrangeas and catnip mix with a flurry of green plants in this easy-care garden plan, producing beautiful pops of purple that stand out against the lush green backdrop. The various heights in the space make the garden perfect for lining up against a fence.
4. Add Some Mulch
A thick layer of mulch is an excellent way to cover any bare ground in your low-maintenance flower garden and reduce weeding. Mulch also improves your soil’s water retention, which reduces the frequency of watering, and it can last several years, depending on the type you pick.
The black mulch used in this low-maintenance small garden design helps create an intentional and clean look. Petunias hanging from the porch ceiling add interest and create a lively combination with the flowers below.
5. Make a Grand Entryway
Transform one side of your entry walkway into a colorful oasis with ornamental grasses and fuss-free perennials.
Beautiful plants such as petunias, Japanese anemones, and verbena boost this front yard’s curb appeal with minimal effort.
6. Personalize Your Garden
Border gardens define and outline spaces in your yard while incorporating plenty of texture and color. Consider small shrubs and low-maintenance perennials for your borders to create a comfy, easy-care garden.
Here, asters and sedums provide a delicate, airy texture and color that perfectly contrasts the heavy, rugged shapes and textures of the stony elements in this walkway garden.
7. Layer with Grass
Thanks to the drought-tolerant perennials present in this low-maintenance flower garden, nonstop color is what the design is all about.
You get to enjoy a palette of purple, pink, blue, and yellow flowers from spring to fall since when one cultivar completes flowering, another takes its place.
8. Keep it Minimal
It can be tempting to include lots of plants and garden art in a small space like the border of a walkway. However, adopting a more minimalistic approach to your plant choices and hardscaping usually turns out to be far less time-consuming to maintain.
This simple garden design focuses on less rather than more, with a Syringa reticulata ‘Summer Snow’ combining with mixed shrubs, perennials, and ornamental grasses to create a serene space.
9. Enjoy the Walk
Before buying those beautiful annual flowers in your local garden center, take note that most annuals require replanting each spring, adding time and expense to purchasing, planning, and planting.
Instead, go for long-lived shrubs and compact perennials like salvias, Liatris, petunias, and amiss for a more low-maintenance garden design. Even though the plants might be costly, you’ll end up saving more in the long run.
10. Plan for Summer
There’s always time to prep your late-summer garden and keep the color going strong until the end of the growing season with summer-blooming, sun-loving flowering plants in your low-maintenance garden design.
Here, climbers such as Rosa ‘KORbin’ and Rosa ‘Ausdrawn’ (Generous Gardener) add color and interest to the stony facade while complementing the Rambler ‘Francis E. Lester’ in the foreground for an outstanding cottage garden.
11. Combine with the Lawn
If you have exposed fences and a dodgy lawn, consider reducing the lawn and introducing a low-maintenance garden packed with beautiful plants.
Here, a gravel garden was filled with salvias and coneflowers to make it more impactful. The plants will bloom and flourish through even the warmest summer weather.
12. Go for a Natural Look
Well-groomed English and French gardens are appealing with their elegant look and clean-cut lines. However, these garden styles can be a hassle to maintain.
Consider a naturalistic look for your low-maintenance garden design and allow your plants to go wild and fill the spaces. Black-eyed Susans, pampas grass, and verbena are the backbone of this garden, providing bold blooms and lots of texture.
13. Add Stepping Stones
This low-maintenance flower garden features some of the best fuss-free perennials you can grow, and the design is perfect for time-constrained or first-time gardeners.
The reliable plants and shrubs don’t demand much care apart from the occasional deadheading and will come back every year!
14. Merge with a Seating Area
Make the most of your low-maintenance flower garden by adding a seating area. The tiled surface, plush sofa, coffee table, and rustic dining set enhance this garden plan.
Using a tiled surface for the seating area helps reduce water use, cut down on weeds, and will last for many years with little maintenance.
15. Front Yard Garden
This low-maintenance front yard garden is filled with sun-loving selections, including a mix of colorful perennials punctuated with only a few green plants.
Cheery yellow black-eyed Susans contrast easy-care allium and coneflowers in this traditional front yard landscape. A set of colocasia plants at the entrance adds some drama to the design.
16. Create a Focal Point
Implement your low-maintenance flower garden with a bang with this simple garden design.
Featuring a colorful ensemble of ageratum, nasturtiums, white cosmos, Bidens ferulifolia and other easy-care favorites alongside lush ornamental bushes, this plan leads the eye to a pair of trees for a striking entry with a splendid autumn scene.
17. Relax in Style
Although containers are an ideal solution for low-maintenance garden plans, growing plants in them usually requires extra effort to keep them fed and watered enough to flourish through the entire growing season. Consider one or two planters instead of filling your small garden with pots.
Here, limelight hydrangeas, petunias, and Japanese forest grass surround the thermal bluestone patio, infusing color and preventing the space from feeling dull. Sweet autumn clematis on the lattice privacy screen makes the space feel more intimate.
18. Be Bold with Roses
In this low-maintenance flower garden design, a variety of roses offer a fun and welcoming way to incorporate brilliant colors into an otherwise rustic and bare space.
The rich-colored blooms add visual depth and interest and contrast nicely with the natural landscaping elements.
19. Deal with Sloping Land
A low-maintenance garden is a simple way to solve a tough-to-mow space in your sloping landscape.
Here, the easy-care flower garden plan combines colorful perennials and annuals such as Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ (Catmint), Rosa ‘Abraham Darby,’ Rosa ‘Graham Thomas’ and Rosa ‘New Dawn’ into a spectacular display that will bloom from spring to fall.
20. Remove the Lawn
A lawn requires frequent watering, regular fertilizing, and weekly mowing, whether big or small. Consider replacing your lawn with no-maintenance decomposed granite and easy-care perennials, shrubs, and small trees for a livelier aesthetic.
Here, colorful flowers and trees such as lion’s-tail, Mexican marigold, Oenthera speciosa (Mexican evening primrose) and Euphorbia cotinifolia (Caribbean Copper Plant) pair with granite and flagstone for a low-maintenance flower garden design perfect for relaxing and entertaining.
