Books: Low Maintenance Gardening

In my years as a landscape designer, I’ve only had a couple of clients who were interested in high-maintenance gardens, and they’re just alike:  They love to spend time working outdoors in the garden, favor unusual and hard-to-find plants, and are passionate about the way their garden looks.

 But the vast majority of my clients don’t know a lot about plants and design, and they tend to want just one thing: low-maintenance.  Now, there’s a beautiful guidebook to tell them exactly how to get what they want.

 In her latest book,The New Low-Maintenance Garden: How to Have a Beautiful, Productive Garden and the Time to Enjoy It (Timber Press, 2009) author Valerie Easton reveals the secrets to modern and stylish gardens that won’t require all of your weekend down time.  And even if you’re a high-maintenance plant freak, you’ll learn many tricks and techniques from Easton that will give you more time to enjoy your creation.

Easton profiles gardens around the country that perfectly illustrate her low-maintenance concepts.  Virginia landscape designer Tom Mannion lists several tips for easy-care gardening: eliminate lawns and plants that need staking or spraying; forgo hedges that require tight trimming; repeat plantings; and use hardscape structure for winter interest.

 In San Francisco, designer Shirley Watts mixes new and old materials; re-purposes items like old metal letters to create unusual paving designs; fills an urn with recycled glass to create a striking water feature. On Vashon Island, southwest of Seattle, landscape architect David Pfeiffer grows edibles: chives under peach trees; raised beds with fruit trees under-planted with lettuces; colorful perennials planted under a currant hedge.

 Scattered throughout the book are valuable insights: the top 10 gardening tips to save the planet; how to get rid of and stay rid of weeds; modest yet reliable self-seeders that won’t overtake the entire landscape; designing and maintaining a sustainable garden; plus lists of  books, blogs, and organizations that will give you additional information you might need.

 As Easton puts it in her low-maintenance “manifesto”:  “A simplified garden, thoughtfully planned, can be just as rewarding as a more complicated, labor-intensive one …. Careful, considered choices and editing ensure that every inch of ground and hour of work is as rewarding as possible.  Most of all, they [low maintenance gardens] don’t awaken dread in their owners at the thought of caring for them.”

 The book contains scores of lovely photographs by Jacqueline M. Koch that highlight all of Easton’s main ideas.  This book is an invaluable addition to the garden library – destined to be a classic for many years to come.

And one disclaimer: I and this blog are mentioned in the book on pages 40 and 83.

Comments

[john roberts]

This looks like the kind of book I need, low maintenance. Thanks for writing about it!