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There are a variety of actions you can take to make your garden easy to manage.
Planting for Low Maintenance
Planting for Low Maintenance
There are several rather simple techniques that, while they may not completely eliminate weeding or other gardening needs, can certainly minimize maintenance. New plantings will most likely require an initial investment of mulching, watering, and weeding for the first year or two until they are fully established.
Right Plant, Right Place
Right Plant, Right Place
Apart from that, the most effective way to reduce the need for maintenance in the long term is to match your site conditions with plants that are well suited for those conditions. This will reduce, or even eliminate the need for watering once established. Allowing the plants to spread out and fill in garden beds will eliminate the need for mulching and greatly reduce the need for weeding in the long term. Sometimes it is actually best to establish a plant that is not ideal for a space where it will grow too fast. There are some plants that can become a bit too well suited for certain spaces where they will tend to dominate and crowd out other plants
Massed Planting
Massed Planting
First, simply install any perennial flowers selected in single-species mass plantings of 5 or more plants, and install them close together to encourage them to physically grow together. This creates a tidy appearance in your landscape while increasing the foraging efficiency for native pollinators when the plant is in bloom. As these plants mature, they will crowd out unwanted plants as they fill the root zone and their foliage leaves little bare soil. Identifying unwanted plants is easier when you take this approach.
Massed plantings of each species are also a very good strategy to help ensure you are providing a sufficient quantity of pollen, nectar, fruit, or leaf material for your visiting birds, bees, or other wildlife. As important as diversity is when landscaping with natives, we’re sure you do not want your wild critters to run out of food when foraging in your yard. Consider a single Monarch butterfly caterpillar on a single milkweed plant. If the plant is small and there are no others of the same species nearby, the caterpillar could literally run out of food. So, it is wise to consider quantity whenever you add a new plant species to your landscape.
Groundcover Plants
Groundcover Plants
You can eventually eliminate the need for mulch by establishing low-growing, dense native plants in between the masses of taller perennials and shrubs. These often green up early, bloom in spring, and spread horizontally with dense foliage that makes an effective weed barrier while delivering additional habitat.
Leave the Leaves
Leave the Leaves
Wherever you possibly can, simply leave the leaves to begin to replicate the natural process in our woodlands. This is particularly important under trees. Lawns are a challenge for large trees, given their compacted soil, limited space for roots and competition with grass for access to water and nutrients.
Fallen leaves provide a natural mulch to the ground and the plants, helping retain soil moisture and insulating the soil from temperature extremes. As the leaves decompose, they provide nutrients to the soil, and a majority of butterfly/moth species actually use the leaf layer to complete their life cycle. Of course, we understand other areas will remain tidy and leaf-free for turf grass.
Bark Mulch
Leaf Mulch
Green Mulch
Mulch
Mulch
Bare soil is where most plants get their start (including the unwanted “weeds”) and the reason so many gardeners dump in yards of mulch every spring. Those widely spaced plants or intended blank spaces in between plant clumps are invitations for weeds anywhere the soil is left exposed. Consider filling in at least some of those spaces with other, shorter, ground-cover types of plants. These often green up early, bloom in spring, and spread horizontally with often dense ground-level foliage. This can be an effective weed barrier between the plants while delivering additional habitat.
Bark Mulch Is Okay
Bark Mulch Is Okay
Un-dyed, ground bark mulch can be helpful for steep slopes or those spaces with high traffic where nothing else will grow. The fibers in the mulch will mat together to create an effective weed barrier that will stay in place.
Leaf Mulch Is Better
Leaf Mulch Is Better
Consider using only leaf mulch or compost for weed management with any new plantings, and especially those lacking a ground cover. Both bark and leaf mulch can minimize weeds by covering the bare soil, and they can both look attractive. However, compost/leaf mulch more readily enriches the soil and is better for various beneficial insects.
Green Mulch Is Best
Green Mulch Is Best
Consider filling at least some of those spaces with other, shorter, ground-cover types of plants. These often green up early, bloom in spring, and spread horizontally with often dense ground-level foliage. This can be an effective weed barrier in between the plants while delivering additional habitat.
Mulch Around Trees
Mulch Around Trees
Leaf mulch, aka compost, would be best, but whatever mulch you choose, be sure to keep it VERY thin near the trunk itself. A “volcano” of mulch, piled high against the trunk, is bad; a “donut” where the thickest of the mulch is a good distance from the trunk is best. Learn more here.
Prevent Plants from Flopping (Chelsea Chop)
Prevent Plants from Flopping (Chelsea Chop)
Many late-season flowering natives will have a tendency to flop over without sufficient root competition. Many of these can be trimmed down in late spring, creating a shorter, shrubbier look. This is called a "Garden Haircut" or the "Chelsea Chop" and is typically done in late May or early June. Some species such as New England Aster can be trimmed several times prior to blooming.
Here is a helpful explainer about how and when to do the "Chelsea Chop."
Deter Deer Browsing
Deter Deer Browsing
You may want to shelter your first- and second-year shrubs from deer or rabbit browse by fashioning a fence around and over your young shrubs and trees. Once they are into their third year of age, they will be less susceptible to mammalian browse.
According to the late Cindy Gilberg, a respected native landscaper in the St. Louis area for many years, each planting should be 70% to 80% browse-resistant natives to be effective. You’ll find her article Creating a Deer-Resistant Native Garden in the March 2012 issue of The Healthy Planet helpful in making your plans. Creating A Deer-Resistant Native Garden « The Healthy Planet
Yet Cindy does point out there are no absolutes to hungry browsers, especially in early spring. Everything newly sprouted is tender and juicy. At that time, it is best to use a spray deterrent until the plants are established. Several of our volunteers have found a rotation of treatments to be the most effective approach, with no single repellent used for more than a month or so at a time, possibly avoiding the deer becoming conditioned to the treatment. It is good to place repellants “deer-nose height.” one to three feet off the ground can work well.
Native Plants to Use or Avoid
Native Plants to Use or Avoid
Shaw Nature Reserve conducted a three-year study in Wildwood, MO and created a list of native plants sorted by how much deer browse they sustained. In general, consider that deer tend to avoid hairy or aromatic vegetation.
Plant Age
Plant Age
Shrubs and trees that are less than two years old are much more likely to be killed from deer browsing. Fence or cover them into to third year. Additionally all plants are much more likely to be eaten in the spring than other seasons.
Shaw Nature Reserve conducted a three-year study in Wildwood, MO and created a list of native plants sorted by how much deer browse they sustained. In general, consider that deer tend to avoid hairy or aromatic vegetation.
Repellents
Repellents
We recommend a product called Deer Out. It is non-toxic to plants and has a peppermint smell, which deer avoid. Other commercial brands include Plantskydd, Sweeneys, Ortho, and Liquid Fence. Some gardeners have had success in spreading the organic lawn fertilizer Milorganite around the planting area. Others swear by cut-up Irish Spring soap bars hung directly from plants or stakes or enclosed in small mesh bags hung from the same.
Scare Devices
Scare Devices
There are a growing number of devices such as the Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler that can be used in combination with other strategies to startle deer away from native plantings.
Buck rub
Buck rub
Buck-rub can be an even greater challenge which may not be addressed much at all by repellents. Many nurseries sell spiral plastic trunk protectors to help minimize this. If you put a major investment into a tree or shrub, you might go further and create a sturdy fence around it when planting. For small numbers of plantings, consider investing in a quantity of rebar and install three posts per plant, equidistant around it. Attach hardware cloth. Install in early autumn. These guards can be removed and reused once you feel the plant is tall enough or large enough to survive on its own.
More information
More information
Partners in Native Landscaping video on landscaping with deer
Additional Resources
Additional Resources
Garden maintenance for wildlife video
Maintenance calendar (short)
Maintenance calendar (long)
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