How To Create An Informal Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Landscaping for "lazy" gardeners

First, let's clarify that "lazy gardeners" in this interpretation do not mean those who do not want to work on a garden plantation in principle, but those who simply firmly decided to do everything beautifully, but at the minimum cost of their labor. In other words, we are talking about a reasonable approach to this issue.

The fact is that, considering the pictures of fashion magazines on landscape design (as well as old books on gardening - there flower beds, lawns and rabatki are no less intricate than those of modern landscape designers), most do not dare to go from reading to business and make some changes to your site, because all the proposed solutions are not at all easy to implement. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. Of course, you can turn to specialists, but it will not be cheap, and the joy that you were able to "bring beauty" will not be the same. In addition, in many cases, caring for a luxury offered in magazines will also be quite laborious.

This is how I looked at colorful illustrations for many years, studied various techniques of landscape design, but I was not able to bring something to life - there was still a garden-garden on my shoulders, and you cannot discount the main work.

Therefore, giving up unrealizable dreams, I began to think about how to make a beautiful garden, but with minimal labor costs. I must say that I came across some ideas, studying a variety of materials and communicating with gardeners, and I came up with some myself. And gradually I developed my own idea on this issue, supported by practical experiments on certain pieces of my own garden.

Informal garden

Most of the garden planning options presented on the pages of landscape design magazines require a huge amount of labor. Moreover, we are talking not only about the initial creation of such a kindergarten - it goes without saying, and you can go for such an option, having gathered up your courage. The problem lies in the subsequent maintenance of the created offspring in an appropriate state. Whether you will be able to find time for this later is a very serious question. Therefore, before deciding on such transformations, you need to think very well and estimate your possibilities.

As for the various gardens presented in the magazines, with all the shining variety of design options for the site, there is only one that is simple to implement, as well as to care for it. This is an informal garden. It requires minimal labor input. In such a garden, most of the soil between plants is covered with mulch or undersized ground cover species, paths are paved with stones or gravel, and vegetables, trees, shrubs and flowers do not grow according to strict canons, but in the way that suits you.

By choosing this layout option, you can safely experiment with plantings - any spectacular combination you come up with, subject to the requirements of a particular plant, will come in handy, and the flight of your creative imagination will be unlimited.

Garden paths

Keeping in mind that you have an informal garden, use every opportunity to cover the bare soil. Otherwise, it will overgrow with weeds, and you will have to constantly strain with weeding. One of the ways of this "cover" is garden paths that prevent weeds from growing and give the site a neat and rather attractive appearance.

The more paths in your garden, the better (but not at the expense of plantings, of course). Moreover, they should certainly be laid out with pebbles, stones, tiles and similar hard materials - it will be elegant and, most importantly, very practical.

As a result:

- paths will cease to be an eternal breeding ground for all kinds of weeds, and you will have to weed less;

- persistent spring mud, which makes work very difficult at the beginning of the season, will be prevented;

- you can remove garbage from all tracks in a matter of minutes.

The material used to create tracks is very different. Natural stone is very beautiful, painted in soothing colors, with a varied surface structure, which makes it possible to use it both on wide grounds and on narrow paths. The paths from the wooden ends of a thick tree sawn in circles look original. Concrete is more practical than beautiful, but it is convenient to walk along such a path in any weather and easily sweep dirt, dust or snow from it. Ordinary pebbles or gravel will do, but the size of the pebbles should not exceed 16 mm, otherwise it will be awkward to step on them. It is very easy to pave the path with ordinary sidewalk tiles - by the way, in my opinion, this is the easiest option to implement, and the sidewalk tiles can look quite beautiful.

Curbs around flower beds

Group ornamental plants into dense compositions, rather than scattering them all over the site. Limit decorative compositions - flower beds - with borders.

On the one hand, it is more difficult for weeds to crawl into a flowerbed with a border. On the other hand, the care for flower beds, lawns and paths is completely different, and by dividing them, you will not waste extra time. If ornamental plants and flowers are placed there, this approach will minimize unnecessary labor, because you will not need to weed, loosen, etc. decent areas - it will be enough to carefully monitor only the groups of flower plants, just mow the rest of the background, and sweep the paths.

In addition, in the presence of curbs, fertile soil will not fall on the lawn and paths, which means that you will not waste fertilizers and valuable humus in vain.

Curbs can be very different: from strips, nets, wood, stone, bricks, tiles, logs, twigs. They will share different modes of keeping the land: outside of the curb, you will mow the grass, and inside the soil between vegetables and flowers, you will mulch thickly. As a result, there will be no weeds either there or there, and you will not get more work.

Curbs inside flower beds

This summer I discovered another type of mini-borders - from a variety of driftwood (note, cheap and effective!). True, snags for edging can be used inside flower beds, and not in the standard sense for creating bumpers. Why are they needed inside the flower beds? Everything is very simple. In an informal garden, the plants in the flower beds are arranged randomly (that is, just to be beautiful, and the plants themselves are effectively combined with each other). Between such freely placed plants, it is advantageous to use some kind of delimiter - somewhere it can be some kind of ground cover plants, and somewhere it can be driftwood covered with moss.

There are two advantages of using driftwood: on the one hand, flower beds, successfully decorated with their help, look much more interesting, and on the other, they cover the soil and thus represent a kind of mulch, i.e. weeds do not grow under them, moisture is retained better, and there is no need to loosen. In addition, using driftwood, you can create interesting transitions between groups of plants - while some groups of plants can be planted at a higher height, some at a lower one, which gives the flower garden a special charm. Of course, large differences in elevation cannot be done this way, and driftwood combined with low and creeping plants are the most effective. For example, I experimented a lot with a variety of low-growing sedums, youngsters, creeping bells and other plants. Do not forget that the result, of course, also depends onhow spectacular driftwood you found.

"Lazy" flower beds

Flowers and ornamental plants today can be planted in the garden in great variety. And it would be unreasonable to refuse shrubs, spectacular vines or equally spectacular flowering or ground cover plants. Do not need. Despite your obvious busyness, no one forces you to limit yourself only to ascetic tenacious people (although now it is easy to find burgundy and red-leaved forms of tenaciousness, from which you cannot take your eyes off!). In each group there are many plants that do not need very much care, whether they be shrubs or spectacular flower beds.

When choosing these or those ornamental plants and flowers, it is better, of course, to be guided by the principle that they must have:

- frost resistance, so as not to fiddle with shelter for the winter;

- endurance, so that they are not particularly "harmful" about our unpredictable and, alas, unfavorable springs and summer;

- the need for minimal or no trimming and shaping.

By planting, say, yews, thujas and various junipers, you can create a truly paradise corner that does not require any care from you at all, except for watering.

For those wishing to acquire a hedge, it is better not to plant such plants as, for example, boxwood, which requires a haircut at least three times in the summer and in addition, shelter for the winter. Better fence yourself off with a spectacular red-leaved barberry, "agreeable" for just one seasonal haircut and does not impose any special requirements.

It is especially worth mentioning climbing plants - they will give your garden a spectacular look, and they themselves grow very quickly, and many of them do not require special care, if only there is something to curl around. Take girly grapes or hops, for example, and no worries. There are also varieties of clematis, which also do not require much care and winter well in the Urals without much shelter (I only cover mine with spruce branches - and no problems). Lemongrass can grow on the south side of the house without much trouble on your part.

Read the next part. Flower garden and alpine slide - for the lazy →