What is an ‘easy’ plant? It can mean different things to different people. For some it could be a flower or vegetable that is dead easy to grow from seed; for others, it’s a plant that is low maintenance – only needing attention once a year, with no mollycoddling.
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It could be a plant that doesn’t demand any of your time, with no deadheading, staking, pruning, watering once it’s established, or tying in. Or maybe it’s a plant that isn’t prone to pests or diseases. Here, we sum up some of the easiest to grow and lowest maintenance plants out there.
Easy to grow from seed
Growing plants from seed cuts the cost of filling the garden with flowers and can be surprisingly easy to do. It’s also something children enjoy, so it’s fun to do this as a family. Some annual plants – those that flower for one season only and then disappear – are best started off indoors while it’s still cold outside, and planted out after the last frosts.
Cosmos is one of the most satisfying of these, germinating quickly, producing large seedlings that are easy to handle, growing on quickly and making a beautiful display when in flower. Marigolds also germinate quickly and are easy to handle and you can go for the larger, showy African marigolds, Tagetes erecta, or the smaller French marigolds, Tagetes patula. Others, like strawflower (Helichrysum bracteatum) sunflowers (helianthus; try branching ones like ‘Claret’ and ‘Valentine’ which flower for many weeks), or calendula take slightly longer to come up but are still fast growing.
If you’d rather take the easier route of sowing directly into the soil outside in spring, then sowing seeds of annuals such as love in a mist (Nigella), annual poppies (P. commutatum and P. rhoeas, which has many cultivars), California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) and pot marigolds (Calendula) can all give good results. Sow the seeds in rows so you can see the seedlings and water the rows if it’s dry to keep the soil moist till they come up.
If veg is more your thing, then the easiest ones to grow from seed include beetroot, spring onions or Swiss chard, all of which can be sown directly into the ground when the soil has warmed up in late spring. Radishes are easy and very quick, and lettuce is easy to raise too – go for cut-and-come-again mixes which you can sow into a large container and, once grown, pick as you need for several weeks. In late spring you can also sow climbing French beans, runner beans or courgettes in the ground.
Unbothered by pests and diseases
Some types of plants, like roses, can be prone to a whole host of pests and diseases, and need some knowledge to grow well, while others, as long as they’re given their basic requirements, will grow well without constant problems.
A lot of plants that grow from bulbs are trouble free, with spring-flowering crocuses, daffodils and, for late spring, flowering alliums among the easiest to grow. Herbaceous perennial plants can be healthy and pest free. Penstemons are long-flowering and reliable, as are Japanese anemones (Anemone hupehensis and Anemone x hybrida), hardy geraniums and geums.
Flowering shrubs can be trouble-free too. Abelia x grandiflora is scented and flowers all summer without a hitch, as do hydrangeas whether they have mophead or lacecap flowers (Hydrangea macrophylla) or panicles (Hydrangea paniculata). Lavender is robust and easy, as is heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica).
Maintenance only once a year
If you’ve little time to spare for gardening, plants that are low maintenance are essential, so you’ll want ones that can mostly be left to their own devices with just occasional attention. Ornamental grasses are a good example, if you grow deciduous ones like Miscanthus, Calamagrostis or Hakonechloa.
Their leaves die back naturally at the end of the year, so you can cut them down completely in late autumn or leave the buff stems and seedheads up all winter for birds and insects, and cut them down before new growth starts in early spring. This makes them easier to manage than evergreen and semi-evergreen grasses, which can be a fiddle to tidy up later in spring.
Verbena bonariensis and Verbena hastata are long-flowering perennials that can also be cut back in either autumn or spring, as are sedums (Hylotelephium) and some shrubs, such as butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) and lavender, for which you can simply trim spent flower heads and the top couple of inches of growth in autumn or early spring.
No staking
Staking plants that flop over can be both time consuming and difficult to get right. The floppiest plants are usually herbaceous perennials with very large flowers, such as peonies, or tall ones with weak stems like delphiniums. If you don’t want to spend time wrestling sticks around collapsing plants, go for more compact perennials such as smaller hardy geraniums (G. sanguineum, G. wallichianum and the shorter cultivars such as G. ‘Tiny Monster’ – anything around 50cm or less should do).
Others include Veronica spicata, which has brightly coloured, pointed, upright flower heads (V. spicata ‘Red Fox’ or V. spicata ‘Royal Candles’) and short achilleas such as A. millefolium. For slightly taller plants which don’t need staking, try clump-forming daylilies (Hemerocallis) or Agapanthus, which have sturdy, stiff stems.
No pruning
Shrubs are the backbone of the garden but pruning them can seem daunting and is not a skill that everyone wants to or needs to master. It is usually done to improve the shape of the plant or to encourage more flowers, but there are shrubs that grow and flower well without regular pruning.
Abelia x grandiflora is a good choice, forming a slightly haphazard but attractive shape naturally and rarely needing to be cut back. Camelias and rhododendron can be left to their own devices until they start to get too large, when they can be cut back hard and then left again. Daphnes dislike being pruned, so if you have one it will flower best if you can avoid any pruning.
Deciduous and autumn-flowering Ceratostigma plumbaginoides and C. willmotianum are both naturally compact and rarely need pruning, as are most shrubby veronicas (formerly known as Hebe) and exotic-looking but hardy Hibiscus syriacus, which is a taller shrub that forms a naturally attractive shape and doesn’t need any regular pruning.
No deadheading
Deadheading spent flowers is often needed to keep plants in bloom for longer by stopping them from setting seed, as well as to get rid of ugly, dead flowerheads. Unfortunately, it can end up being another time-consuming chore. The easiest way to cut the time spent on this is to grow plants that will stay in flower without deadheading, or plant ones that drop their petals as flowers die.
Some summer-flowering tub and basket plants are very good at what’s often called self-cleaning (where dead petals are dropped) including colourful begonias, impatiens (Busy Lizzies) and fuchsias, all of which can be grown in sun or light shade.
Plants that produce masses of blooms without deadheading include cosmos, where new flowers tend to quickly cover any deadheads, and some daisies such as Erigeron karvinskianus, which happily produces blooms for months on end. This tends to self-seed around the garden but is such a pretty plant it rarely becomes a problem.
You can also avoid deadheading where plants have attractive seed pods, such as the annuals Love-in-a-mist (nigella) and honesty (Lunaria annua).
No watering once established
With long dry spells of weather becoming increasingly common, watering the garden can end up being a much-too-regular task. All plants will need to be watered if it doesn’t rain in the weeks after you’ve planted them, but once they are established there are plenty that are well adapted to cope with drought.
Mediterranean shrubs such as lavender and rosemary can cope well with dry weather, as can some other shrubs including Buddleja davidii, Abelia x grandiflora, shrubby veronicas (formerly Hebe), Potentilla fruticosa and Nandina domestica.
Perennials that withstand drought include spring-flowering Bergenia, late summer flowering Hylotelephium, and summer-flowering Veronica spicata and Russian sage (Salvia yangii), as well as hardy salvias such as Salvia nemorosa and S. x sylvestris.
Climbers that don’t need tying in
Some plants that are described as climbers, like climbing roses, don’t have any way of supporting themselves and must be regularly trained and tied on to their support. However, other climbers have either tendrils which allow them to cling to wires or trellis or stems that twine around supports. They will all need an obelisk, trellis or some wire netting to climb and they might need some cutting back if they get too large, but they are generally much easier to manage.
These self-supporting climbers include clematis, which can be winter, spring or summer flowering, which will need to be pruned once a year; star jasmine (Trachelosphermum jasminoides or T. asiaticum) and summer-flowering jasmine.
In mild areas or sheltered spots, you could also grow self-supporting Campsis radicans or passion flower (Passiflora caerulea and its cultivars such as ‘Snow Queen’). Some annual and tender perennial climbers are self-supporting and can be grown from seed, such as Chilean glory vine (Eccremocarpus scaber), black-eyed Susan (Thunbergia alata), cup and saucer plant (Cobaea scandens) and Spanish flag (Ipomoea lobata), all of which are fast growing and will be in flower in summer if seeds are sown in early spring.
A final note on conditions
For all of the plants we suggest here, it goes without saying that if a plant is growing in the conditions that it prefers, it will thrive: a sun lover will do best in a sunny spot but will struggle in shade, and a plant that likes shade won’t do well in the sun. So it is worth getting to know the conditions in your garden, in terms of soil and the amount of sunlight it gets, and planting accordingly – this really will make your life easier, as the happier your plants are, the less attention they will need.