Landscaping ideas to make your life easier
Do you know what I hate? Lawn care! I know there are some people who love working in the yard and take a great deal of price in a lawn made up of a perfect carpet of grass framed by weed free flower beds. I prefer to spend my free time writing articles on how to save money, so my lawn care goal is to not have the worst lawn on my block, a goal which some of my neighbors would argue I have failed at. I could use some maintenance free landscaping ideas.
So on a recent trip to see my sister and brother-in-law I was jealous of their lawn. They had the perfect lawn. There was no grass to mow, just rocks. Rocks don’t need to me mowed, fertilized or watered. In fact, instead of just being a bunch of work with no reward, their lawn was actually productive since they were growing a bunch of vegetables
How you can have a low maintenance lawn.
As you can see from this picture, just start with a simple rock garden. To do this start with a layer of Landscape Fabric
On top of the landscape fabric you need the rock. For a smaller rock garden, running to the local hardware store and buying a few bags of rocks is fine, but for a job this size you need to think a little bigger. The first step is to figure out how much rock you need to buy. To do this measure your lawn, and figure out the length of your lawn and the width of your lawn in feet. Then figure out how deep you want the rocks to be, 2-4 inches is a common choice. If you have this information, you can then use this handy calculator to figure out how much rock you need in cubic feet, since that is how it is commonly sold.
It’s probably a good idea to buy a little more than you need to fill in holes and level out uneven areas. You may even want to consider buying as much as an extra 25%. Now that you know how much rock you will need I recommend calling around to a few places to see who has the best price. Rock is available in a variety of different types and colors, so you even get to customize how your lawn will look a little bit. You can buy bulk rock from your local home improvement warehouse of course, but you also might want to do a search online for a quarry or rock dealer in your areas.
The Plants
Many people who have rock gardens still have plants in the ground of course, but I like my sister’s family’s idea of putting all the plants into planters. This makes things easier to plant, easier to weed, and easier to get rid of if you ever change your mind. My brother in law simply bought a bunch of planters
You can just use decorative plants if you want, but because my brother-in-law is a productive kind of guy, he planted mostly vegetables like tomatoes, okra, beans, peppers, etc. But what about watering you say? Isn’t watering all of those planters as much work as watering a lawn? Well, my brother in law had a solution to that also.
You can see from this picture that he has set up an automatic watering system to do all the work for him. This was also very easy to do, as he just purchased an Automatic drop watering kit similar to this one
So what do you think? If you are looking for landscaping ideas does it make sense to rip out your yard and put in a low maintenance yard?
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Thanks to my sister and brother in law for their help with this article. This isn’t the first time their ideas have appeared on this website, just the first time they were given proper credit. Links to Amazon.com are affiliate links which help support the charity noted on the right hand side of this website.
I wish that I could do something like this in my yard, but the amount of rain in Tennessee means it’s nearly impossible to have an outdoor space where something is not growing. I like the idea, though!
Landscaping does not have to be an expensive task. A landscaping company is the best way to improve your landscape and have it looking it’s best. Simple maintenance can have your lawn looking great.