Gardening is an endlessly interesting hobby, but at certain times in our lives, it can start to feel like the chores outweigh the pleasure of the activity. It might be that you are getting older, and things take that bit longer and are more of a physical effort; or that time is a precious commodity because you are looking after young children, or spending long days at a desk, or both.
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The good news is that there are many easy ways to make your gardening life less labour intensive and more enjoyable. We have gathered advice from professionals and top garden owners to share their best time- and work-saving tips for you, to make the time you do have in the garden more fun and less frazzled.
Beat the weeds, easily
Charles Dowding, champion of no dig growing, advocates mulching from the start. “It has to be mulching as my No. 1 tip and priority. I reckon that weeding is the biggest time-waster, and so smothering with any kind of surface material is so worthwhile. Plus that makes the surface of any border or bed softer and that means weeds are easier to remove. Little and often rather than every month! The old saying goes: one year seeding is seven years’ weeding. For me, that’s a golden rule, never let weeds go to seed.”
And, if you are tackling an area where the weeds are really thick, “that’s an opportunity to lay cardboard on them, with just enough compost to hold it in place, say 2cm,” Charles says. This will deprive them of sunlight and the cardboard will rot into the ground.
Tough plants = more time
When creating a new area, always make sure that the plant you are putting in is right for that those conditions - hot and sunny; shady and water-logged, etc - or else it won’t thrive and you will just have to spend more time looking after it.
Forget anything that needs mollycoddling, says Ed Bollom, who runs a design and garden consultancy, Bollom Gardens, in the northeast of Scotland, having previously been at Gordon Castle and HM The King’s garden Highgrove. At Gordon Castle, he had to learn how to keep eight acres of walled garden up to scratch with a minimal staff. “As I get older, I have less patience for faffing about trying to stake top heavy delphiniums or asters, or spending hours watering and deadheading,” he says. “Plants that look after themselves are worth their weight in gold and my current favourite tough, low-maintenance perennials include Achillea millefolium, Geum, Anthemis tinctoria, Persicaria amplexicaulis, Astrantia major, Eryngium planum, Salvia nemorosa, Erigeron karvinskianus and Sanguisorba hakusanensis.”
Sowing seeds is an enjoyable part of the gardening year in spring but the scale of it can be a turn off, especially when it comes to pricking out and potting on all the seedlings. Keep it simple and sow straight into modules instead of seed trays - something Rachel de Thame has recently revealed she now does, as she has neuropathy in her fingers.
Everywhere is your compost heap now
Instead of dutifully carting off all your deadheaded flowers to the compost heap, just chuck them over your shoulder and let them lie in the border, where they will soon frazzle away to nothing, providing a bit of protection for the soil as they do. It is a practice that Troy Scott-Smith employs at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, and it saves the garden team there a lot of time and energy.
Elizabeth Salvesen, who owns Whitborough House in Midlothian and works with her head gardener Vincent Dudley, is also an advocate of chop and drop, and its cousin, the ‘cut and cover’ method. They cut down all their perennial plants in autumn and simply leave the stems on the ground in the beds to provide cover for creatures and the soil. Come February, before the new growth starts to emerge, Vincent takes a strimmer to the lot, and the chopped up material soon rots away into the ground.
One job at a time
We are all guilty of flitting form one job to the next in the garden, but flower farmer Georgie Newbery, of Common Farm Flowers in Somerset, recommends exercising some discipline to maximise efficiency and minimise effort. “Do one job at a time - for example, you are not allowed to plant dahlias until all your seedlings are pricked out, or to prick out those seedlings until all the beds are mulched. It is an incredibly successful way of working.”
Replace flowers with shrubs
“If planning a garden later in life, design it to grow old gracefully,” says Ed. “Try to create a structure of trees and shrubs that work well without needing the addition of high-maintenance herbaceous borders or complicated garden features. Make sure you space your plants generously, so they don’t need removing or hard pruning a few years down the line.”
Think of flowering evergreens such as Viburnum tinus, Osmanthus, Choisya and Daphne. Buxus is a bit risky these days unless you want to go to the bother of preventative spraying against box moth and inspecting for signs of blight. If you want to keep things low maintenance, let your bushes grow au naturel, rather than cutting them into tight shapes that will need regular clipping.
The right tools for the job
Battery tools such as hedge trimmers are much lighter than petrol powered ones, so they are less effort to hold and use, and you’ll need fewer breaks to recover.
Georgie also recommends snips for deadheading and cutting, such as those from Niwaki, especially if you have arthritic hands. “The bounce of the spring prevents RSI (repeated stress injury).”
Gardener Jenny Barnes is known for her creative rose training techniques, and swears by her Felco No. 2 secateurs, which she wears in a holster for easy use; but her greatest tip is on how she uses her garden twine.
If you have a reasonably straightforward area of grass and can afford one (they start at about £300), unless you like that weekly ritual of heaving out the mower, a robot mower is surely a no brainer.
Longer lawns = less work
And who says we need a bowling-green sward? These days, letting the grass grow longer in places is a positive statement for nature. “The trick to keeping long grass looking neat and tidy is to cut a strip of mown grass around the edges and have snaking paths meandering through it,” says Ed. “You will have to occasionally remove hefty weeds such as docks and thistles, but a meadow-like lawn will only have to be cut once a year in late autumn.”
Reinvent your pots
Elizabeth is dismissive of all the faff that goes into raising tender annuals for pots. “It's a waste of time. They work, but they’re an intensive care sort of thing.” Instead, she uses perennials such as salvias (the pots keep them away from rabbit nibbles), Verbena bonariensis, hostas and lavenders.
Unless you want to up your step count as you heave around the hose or watering can, don’t have too many pots all over the place, as watering them is a time-consuming exercise; it makes sense to group them together.
Also, go for larger containers. The larger the pot, the more you can cram in, and it will dry out more slowly. Just make sure all the plants you are supplying have the same watering needs. Strategically placed taps or water butts in the most intensive areas of the garden will save on those steps too, and you can never have too many watering cans.
Clever ideas for crops
In the veg beds, “use companion plants as ground cover to suppress weeds,” says Ed. “Alyssum, viola, tagetes and calendula make colourful additions to your kitchen garden and attract beneficial insects.”
When growing a crop, be generous with your spacing, so that you can whizz between the rows with a hoe rather than having to get down on your hands and knees and carefully weed between tightly packed plants. Hoeing is much quicker than hand weeding and with a long handle, you can stay upright and keep your back straight. “I always space rows of vegetables or cut flowers at least 50cm apart,” says Ed. Charles advocates only hoeing in dry weather, though: “In wetter conditions, it doesn’t work and hand weeding is what needs doing.”
Finally, for an easy life and cutting down on time on your allotment or growing patch, make sure it has a good element of perennial veg and fruit, whether that is currant bushes and gooseberries, or the likes of rhubarb, artichokes, Welsh onions and sorrel - things that are less easy to find in the supermarket.