Gear Up For 2024 ... By Doing Less? You Bet!

Are you a lazy gardener? Perhaps you are just too dang busy? Don’t worry and still be happy with your landscape! 

We all feel a little stretched thin and have less time to spend on our hobbies these days. Perhaps there is just too much on your plate to feel like you can handle it all, and your garden has been left hanging?

Nature Hills Nursery is here with some tips and tricks to get more from your garden - by doing less this new year!

The Busy Gardeners Garden

Easing Into 2024 With Nature Hills Nursery!

The Busy Gardeners Garden

The amount of innovation out there to help us reduce our workload - in every aspect of our lives - has extended into our gardens and landscapes! From automating and push buttons lawn equipment, and self-watering planters, to tougher and lower maintenance plants, the amount of time-saving options these days is astounding if you know where to look!

This is great news as we all seem to be taking on more and more each day with less downtime. The last thing we want after a hectic day is more work waiting for us at home!

You want a permaculture garden you can relax in and a landscape that won’t fall to pieces the second you turn your attention elsewhere!

1. Don’t Be Afraid To Downsize

Be Present, Not Perfect - Aimee Chase

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reducing your workload if that workload is your garden! You don’t have to have everything squared away perfectly, you don’t need every option available all the time! It’s ok to have just one or two items and some filler.

If one plant is all you have in a garden bed, fill in the bare spots with mulch or a groundcover plant and scatter a few seeds around to see what pops up on its own. Enjoy what you have and don’t add to your workload if you are already maxed out!

It’s about quality, not quantity!

If all you have time for is one prized Rose bush, one container plant, or one small garden bed to focus on this year, don’t worry. There’s always next spring or fall, or that next moment you have some time and gumption to do more.

2. Remember Your Limits

Know Thyself - Socrates

Did past-you have more exuberance than current-you? It’s easy to order all those plants and seeds from catalogs and online here at Nature Hills! Sometimes those shiny new plants and sale prices are too good to pass up!

Then they arrive on your doorstep and all that earlier excitement and energy didn’t arrive with them!

Sorry, Nature Hills doesn’t have a cure for that yet, so we’re here to remind you to set limits. We don’t want to see those new plants go to waste either.

So if past-you gave future-you too much work, or something came up between then and now, it’s just fine to tuck those fall-dormant perennials, bulbs, and sleeping plants into a cool, dark garage or shed and keep them moderately watered and dormant until the next burst of energy or time. If you have evergreens or plants with leaves that arrived in the spring, you can either keep them by a protected porch window or in a protected yet shaded location outside.

And a message for current-you ordering all those plants and seeds - start digging holes and preparing the ground at the same time you’ve ordered everything!

Future-you will thank you!

3. Long-Lived Plants = More Time For You

Time is long but life is short - Stevie Wonder

Ditch the annuals that need to be replanted every single year and choose long-lived perennials instead!

• Peonies
• Old-Fashioned Iris
• Black Eyed Susan
• Daylily
• Coneflower
• Yarrow
• Hosta
• Shasta Daisy
• Cranesbill (Perennial Geranium)
• Coreopsis
• Astilbe
• Salvia
• Bleeding Heart
• Sedum

Some of these plants are still rambling throughout abandoned properties and farmland without a care (or end) in sight!

Not only do these plants happily thrive with the barest minimum of maintenance, but some self-seed, spread, can be divided to spread them out more, and require so very little attention other than your admiration!

Or choose dwarf shrubs instead of perennials for some much longer-lasting landscape options!

4. (Nearly) No-Maintenance Gardens

Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability. - Edsger Dijkstra

All plants will need watering and some attention during their first year. It’s vital to their longevity if you get them off to the right start. But once established, low-maintenance and self-sufficient plants practically take care of themselves.

Ditch those immaculately sheared hedges and go for a more easy-going option or maintenance program. Plant shrubs and trees that are naturally compact and densely growing so you don't need to prune as much, this also lets you have something in the middle between formal and informal.

Modern plants and innovative nurseries are pumping out loads of new plants that need less spraying, fertilizing, pruning, and overall maintenance to look good, if not great! Choose plants that are pest, deer, and disease-free so you won’t have to spray either!

Plan ahead! You will get so much more out of your time when you’ve prepped and planned it all out ahead of time!

When in doubt - grow what you know! If you are already busy - don’t try that fancy new tree or plant this year, and go with an easy-to-grow plant you have time-texted experience with instead.

Do you have a plant that is just too much work or is already struggling? Replant it elsewhere, give it away, or get rid of it instead of wasting attention you don’t have to begin with.

5. Mulch Mulch Mulch!

Never plant without a bucket of compost at your side. - Elsa Bakalar

Remember arborist bark chips, high-quality compost, and mulch are a gardener's best friends! You boost the health and wellness of your entire garden by adding this single top-dressing everywhere! Garden beds, vacant ground, containers, and around every tree or shrub - mulch it!

Mulch not only holds in soil moisture so you water less, but it protects root systems from heat and chill, and enriches the soil as it breaks down! Think of it as a blanket of protection against everything that can impact your garden.

Got a garden bed or pathway with nothing growing in it? Nature abhors a void so - mulch it! You’ll reduce soil evaporation, avoid soil compaction, and stop weeds in their tracks with a deep layer of pebbles, shredded bark, or other types of mulch. You can even include self-seeding living mulch and groundcovers, also known as cover crops, to help fill those bare spots.

This single 3-4 inch thick layer can make or break any garden - especially when you can’t be out there to tend to it as often! Plus a fresh layer of mulch is the finishing touch to a landscape, it just refreshes the entire yard and makes everything look squared away!

6. Natives & Free Spirits

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower.- John Harrigan

Why fight nature - work with her!

• Plant bulbs, perennials, and annuals that self-seed and shrubs that sucker or form thickets, so that every year you have more plants or larger plants without lifting a finger! Combined with plants that are long-lived and hardy native plants for your area - your garden will practically grow itself
  

• Choose native options and plants that won't become a problem should their seeds jump the garden border. Native and indigenous plants have evolved alongside pests and diseases and have learned how to grow despite them.

• Let a few weeds or wildflowers, that aren’t noxious weeds, grow freely in the in-between spaces and out-of-the-way areas. Your soil quality and pollinators will thank you for your reduced effort!

• Include the good bugs with the bad, and nature loves balance, so including an integrated pest management plan will take care of problems on its own.

Reduce your labor. Don’t force plants to bend to your will, or grow how and where you demand them, instead plant them where they do best!

7. Phase Out The Water-Hungry Lawn

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. - Michael Pollan

Reduce the lawn and gradually replace your high-maintenance, water-hungry turf grass. Go for no-maintenance hardscapes, beds of mulch or groundcover, rock gardens, or just a tree in the middle with a wide circle of mulch to eliminate how much you need to mow, water, fertilize, and mess with weeds.

Try creating one of these instead:

• Xeric planting beds and Fire-Wise defensive zones
• Low or No-Mow meadows
• Easy-care garden beds full of self-seeding, long-lived and native plants
• Gradually incorporate lawn/turfgrass alternatives

The front yard is shrinking in general anyway, as properties are shrinking, as homeowners choose to enjoy more diversity in their landscape by way of the incredible assortment of plant options out there. Plus many are including homesteading and edible landscaping into their outdoor living spaces!

8. Automate The Hose

You can appreciate the flowers in someone else’s garden while still watering your own. - Jennae Cecelia

In addition to using lower water-usage, native, or xeric plants that thrive on less, there are many ways you can reduce your time spent watering (or trying to remember to water)!

Install sprinklers for your lawn with a timer that you can set the day, week, and duration. Include underground trickle hoses and soaker hoses whenever creating a new landscaping bed, or add them to existing gardens to keep leaves dry and roots moist.

Pick up an automatic timer for your garden hose so you won't have to remember to get outside and water, nor need to remember what day your neighborhood can water. Plus there will be no more worry about if you forgot to turn off the hose or left it running overnight.

9. Get Some Help!

Many hands make light work. - John Heywood

You don’t have to do it all by yourself! Make it a celebration of spring and gather up all your friends and family for a garden clean-out party or barbecue! Get the kids outdoors with new garden gloves and kid-sized garden tools.

Then divvy up the garden chores, break out a vat of lemonade, and remember to feed everyone afterward for their efforts. We’re sure your friends and family will be even more keen on this idea if you share your harvest with them later on! Don’t forget to swap yards or show up for their garden clean-up parties too!

Even if you don't have any outdoorsy friends you can coax into helping you out, there are tons of neighborhood kids in need of some cash, and many reputable companies that you can pay to help with these larger chores.

10. Hyper-Focus Gardening

By focusing deeply on just one important thing at a time, we become the most productive version of ourselves. - Chris Bailey

No money or friends with strong backs? Simply arrange a single hour each day, a single afternoon each week, or a single day each month - whatever you have available! Call it ‘me-time’ in the landscape and put on that fancy sun hat, garden gloves, and those garden boots you bought last year because they were cute, and get out there!

Then, garden!

Start a garden journal and make a list when your mind is in planning mode. Then when the energy kicks in - set a timer, put away the phone, and simply focus on the weeds, the birds, and the fresh air. Get everything done that you set out to do for however long you have.

Sometimes all you need is that push to get outside, then once you are there, you can keep going longer than you thought you had the energy and time for!

11. One Day (or Task) At A Time

Go easy on yourself. Whatever you do today, let it be enough. - Unknown

Remember, it doesn't have to all be done in a day! Do what you can and don’t beat yourself up over what didn’t get done. Ma Nature has been taking care of plants without our involvement for a millennia so if you get something else done instead, your garden will be waiting for you!

Make a list or start a garden journal with outlined tasks to take the task of remembering it all off your plate - or check out Nature Hills #ProPlantTips for Fall and Spring clean-up checklists that are already done for you!

Then pick one task to accomplish that weekend, that week, or that day and feel good about getting it done.

Ease Into 2024 With Lazy Gardening

It’s so easy to get overwhelmed with the picture-perfect (staged) photos we see online. Remember that those are for your inspiration, not added frustration!

Other tips to help yourself out include -

• Keeping everything related in one convenient place. It’s exhausting to look for things or have to go back and forth collecting what you need for the garden.
• Put all your tools and equipment away as soon as you are done!
• Keep equipment close to where you will use it (therefore easier to put it away afterward) 
• Group similar items - whether it’s plants, tools, supplies, and well, everything else!
• Write down those plans and ideas! Our minds are too overwhelmed to remember it all!
• A little effort now saves you lots of time in the future
• Let the weeds grow! As long as they aren’t competing or invasive, give them some space for native pollinators and beneficial insects.

 

If you follow a few hints and tips, a solid plan, and some time management - plus plenty of wiggle room - you too can still have it all without working and worrying yourself to exhaustion.

Nature Hills Nursery is here to help you every step of the way! Go gently on yourself and gently into 2024 with more time for yourself while still maintaining the same curb appeal and enjoyment from your self-care gardening pleasures!

Happy Planting!