May 26, 2017

3 Handy Tricks For The Lazy Gardener

The UK is bursting with people who want a “no work” garden. Even if you love looking out on a beautiful garden, there are probably times where you just wish it would tend to itself! If your busy schedule doesn’t allow much time to get into the garden and work on sprucing it up, there are fortunately some handy tricks you can use make it easier for yourself. Here are three to try out…

Get Companion Plants

One of the best ways to make your garden easier to maintain is getting the plants themselves to help out. Companion plants can do just that, and will help with a number of aspects of gardening that may be nothing but headaches to you. Companion plants are any plants that naturally provide benefits to the neighbouring fauna. This might include providing shelter from strong winds, support for climbing plants, or shade from the sun. Certain combinations of companion plants can also be effective at keeping pests away. By doing some companion planting, you’ll assure the long-term health of your plants, and prevent various potential issues that may come up. This, of course, means there’s less work required of you to deal with the health issues that do spring up. Do a little reading on the kinds of plants that will suit your garden, and you’ll save yourself hours of work in the future.

Take It Slow

Even if you have a huge garden, you don’t need to strain yourself to fill it with greenery all at once. Instead, try to concentrate on a single self-sustainable area at a time, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. Ultimately, you can have the garden of your dreams, but in the meantime, try to hone your green thumb through smaller projects, and become more efficient at the gardening jobs that there’s no way of avoiding. Learning how to install artificial grass, prune a tree effectively, weed flowerbeds and so on all takes time and practice. Don’t be ashamed of doing one or two little jobs here and there, and putting off a large-scale makeover. As you tackle these smaller garden chores, you’ll become better suited to getting through the larger ones in no time.

Try the “No Dig” Method

In natural environments, the soil is usually undisturbed by human interference, and the plants have to survive in the conditions they’re given. Ironically enough, there’s a gardening method which aims to raise healthier plants by cutting down work on the gardener’s part. To harness the “no dig” method, choose a plot, place a layer of wet cardboard over it, then add a layer of mulch or compost on top of it. You should also pierce a hole in the cardboard for each plant you’re planning to grow there, allowing their roots to reach the nutrient-rich soil beneath. The mulch isn’t really necessary, but foregoing it will mean that you’ll need to wait a few months for the cardboard to break down. By the time it does, however, any weeds that were in the soil should have been killed off.

Happy Weekend,
Love Happy x