With all the tasks demanding your attention this spring, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that our gardens are mostly there for us to ENJOY. We can certainly take pride in some jobs well done but it’s also nice to have the time to sit back and relax. So, we have gathered the best expert tips on maintaining a beautiful, healthy, sustainable garden in the laziest way possible, so you spend less time on your feet - and more time with them up.
Ten expert-recommended gardening cheats to give you more time to relax
Chop and drop
Troy Scott Smith, is head gardener at Sissinghurst, and he uses the ‘chop and drop’ method of disposing of spent flowerheads - mainly as it saves time for him and his team when removing the dead flower heads from perennials and roses throughout the famous garden. “We chuck them straight into the border," he explains. "It feels like it’s wrong but actually, they dissolve so quickly and I suspect do a little bit of good for the soil as well. But for me the key is time saving. If you have to trim these, put them into a bucket and then deal with them, it’s all extra processes,” he says.
No mow – ever?
‘No Mow May’ has become a bit of a movement to help gardeners welcome more diversity into their gardens while still allowing them to have their traditional green swards. But what if you cut your mowing regiment to just a handful of times a year?
Flower farmer, Charlie Ryrie’s gardening style has changed over the years but since the pandemic she has made a real push towards more sustainable garden management. The fact that she gets to put the mower down and let the flowers do the hard work for her is an added bonus.
“I had already stopped regular mowing, and sowed yellow rattle beneath the orchard trees. The first year, the long grass was so thick it was a hideous job cutting it back in August after the rattle had seeded, but within three years, orchids, vetches and other wildflowers moved into the lighter grass, which is easily cut with a domestic mower. I would mow once in earliest spring and then not until late autumn.”
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Leave your leaves
Leaf mould is called garden gold for a reason and many gardeners treasure the annual drop as a free delivery of soil conditioner. What they don’t relish so much is the hours of raking and scraping to take the leaves up.
The good news is you can mostly just let the leaves stay where they fall. New York-based ecological horticulturalist, Rebecca McMackin, reveals that gardeners in the US call it simply ‘leave the leaves’: “They’re literally called leaves – we should leave them. Of course, leaving leaves can look a bit wild, perhaps unkempt. In more formal environments, there are strategies to give a clean look. Keep a clean edge, and you can get away with benign neglect in the rest.”
This isn’t just an easy way to get out of tidying. Where leaf litter breaks down on the top of your border is called the ‘duff layer’ and is a vital habitat for bumblebees, moths and butterflies as well as beetles and woodlice. Worms are bringing leaves down into the soil, sequestering carbon while fungi and bacteria break the litter down into plant-available nutrients.
You shouldn’t leave the leaves on your lawn however, but still - don’t touch that rake! If your mower has been gathering dust from a summer of no mowing, you can put it to good use running over fallen leaves, both chopping them up to help them break down faster and gathering them up in the grass basket to be distributed where needed.
No dig, no drama
Double digging used to be the pride of every allotmenteer’s patch. Rows and rows of deeply dug earth ready to receive that season’s veg. But horticulturalists now realise that, along with breaking gardeners’ backs, all this soil turning was also breaking up vital ecosystems that are vital for plants to thrive.
Charles Dowding has been a passionate advocate of the ‘no dig’ method for over 40 years at his market garden, Homeacres. “No dig is basically about copying nature, where you don't have soil disturbance and debris falls on top. Soil organisms come up to the surface, eat it, take it down, excrete it as food for other soil organisms – so you get a whole network building up in the undisturbed soil.
Putting compost on top of the soil is a short circuit of the decomposition process – it enables a rapid build up of soil fertility and rapid success, basically. You can make a no dig bed in the morning and plant it up in the afternoon, if it's the right time of year.”
No dig is increasingly being promoted by gardening influencers such as Jamie Walton, aka Nettles & Petals, who chronicled his transformation of an abandoned allotment site into a no dig vegetable garden using rolls of cardboard and a new compost layer.
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Be water wise
Before you curse the arrival of the inevitable hosepipe ban after one of the wettest UK winters on record, consider how you can get away without wielding the hose altogether.
Take what designer Matthew Wilson has done in this Surrey garden (above). Aside from the very notable lack of a thirsty lawn, the Mediterranean planting scheme forms part of a ‘xeriscape’, a garden that requires little or no irrigation, or indeed much maintenance at all.
This approach is both sustainable and admirably lazy. Use plants that are adapted to drought conditions including bulbs that go dormant in summer, perennials with silver or small-leaved foliage are also very resilient and grasses which will tolerate long, dry periods. Mulch deeply – in Matthew’s case with gravel - to lock in moisture and you can relax in the sunshine, safe in the knowledge that nothing is going thirsty.
Grow your own compost
If the idea of lifting, sieving and barrowing quantities of compost back and forth to feed your veg patch makes your knees creak, consider growing your own compost – and just leaving it where it is.
One of the Land Gardeners, Henrietta Courtauld, sows green manure (fast-growing plants such as vetch or mustard) to improve soil health. “We are covering the soil all the time. We dig the green manure in before it flowers but sometimes we leave it because it’s too irresistible – and bees love it.”
The green manure method does still involve some labouring, however, so what about a version that just needs the odd snip or slash and you’re done? ‘Natural farmer’, Joshua Sparkes, uses the polyculture method at Birch Farm in Devon. This means growing a wide range of plants in a single bed to encourage wildlife diversity and natural pest predators. But it also means growing weeds.
“Weeds play a crucial role here at the farm. Many of our polycultures will include ten to 15 different weeds that have a huge diversity of rooting depths, with roots being our main soil improver,” Joshua explains. “Weeds are kept in check for the first six weeks of planting when we systematically sickle or harvest the emerging weeds. The weeds can be cut back and dropped as mulch multiple times during the year, and we harvest them daily with vegetables for eating. The reason we sickle is because we want to keep all the root systems in the ground, so we never hoe or pull our weeds out.”
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Seed heads are the ultimate multi-tasker
Seed heads are a lazy gardener’s best friend. Leaving them on your plants does several jobs at once. Firstly, you don’t have to plant lots of different specimens for year-round interest. Ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’ (below) has striking yellow blooms in late summer which transform into beautifully wispy seed heads over winter.
They’re also incredibly wildlife-friendly. This biennial sea holly, Eryngium giganteum ‘Silver Ghost’ produces a rosette of foliage in the first year, followed by a flowering stem the next (and sometimes the year after that). The flowers are loved by bees and the architectural seedheads persist into winter, providing sustenance for a wide range of insects and small mammals.
And finally, they even do the job of planting for you. The sea holly will self-seed around the garden given the right conditions, while the Ligulario is a perennial, coming back to dazzle year after year.
Pick up perennials
Perennials are the ultimate ‘set it and forget it’ plant. By choosing robust varieties that don’t need to be lifted in winter (delicate Dahlias do demand a great deal of attention from the lazy gardener) you can plant a perennial border once, sit back and enjoy the display year after year.
Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Willemijntje’
Makes a neat, tight plant with deep, lilac-pink flowers that are slightly reddish in bud. A perennial with great impact towards the end of summer. Good for both a sunny or partially shady border.
Crocosmia 'Hellfire'
A huge improvement on Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, with larger flowers that are pure, darkest-red. This perennial also doesn’t spread as aggressively. Flowers for weeks and is happy in moisture retentive soils, in both full sun or part shade.
Echinacea pallida
This exquisite native of the North American prairies, the most dainty of blooms, displays its balletic elegance with slender, pale-pink ray florets that are held horizontally, then gradually droop groundward and flutter in the breeze. The orange-brown central cone remains through winter, topping the bronze stems. Despite its appearance, it is hardy and attractive to bees and butterflies and is outstanding when planted in a troupe with other prairie-style plants. Full sun and moist, well-drained soil create ideal growing conditions.
Super spreaders
Expert gardener, Jack Wallingford, looks to strong, spreading plants that can outcompete weeds to help keep his patch under control. “I started by observing local wild plants in and around our garden, including Valeriana officinalis, Rumex acetosella and Digitalis purpurea, matching their vigour with the likes of Veronicastrum and Eupatorium. These all grow through and over a thick carpet of dandelions and Prunella vulgaris without problem, and are combined with with suppressing plants capable of starving any interlopers of light beneath their dense clumps, such as Brunnera, Geranium and Polystichum.”
This method has had notable success, even taming his nettles although, he says: “If the odd nettle and dandelion live between or below these other plants, so much the better for diversity.” He does admit that he’s yet to crowd out the ground elder or brambles.
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Plant smart
Ultimately, a gardener can’t be lazy if everything in the garden keeps demanding their attention so start from the very beginning with some lazy principles. Charlie Ryrie advises: “Listen to your garden. If something needs constant attention, it probably doesn’t want to be there. There are no rules that work for every garden or gardener. If something doesn’t work for you, don’t struggle, but consider change.”
Even dedicated garden professionals don’t want to be at their garden’s beck and call all the time. Jack Wallington admits “. Like most people, I have a full-time job and a social life, and we spend a lot of time growing organic food, which doesn’t leave much time for ornamental stuff. Yet I still want excitement, and I’ve been testing interesting combinations requiring barely any intervention from me that will naturally compete with everything else.”
By taking time to watch gardens develop, letting nature have its way more than we’re perhaps used to and allowing the odd weed to do its work, perhaps lazy gardening is something we should all adopt, not just benefiting us but the environment as a whole? Jack agrees: “A new low-maintenance ethic feels important; by cracking it, it will help people get a designer look in an easier, more ecological way.”
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