Low-maintenance lawn care tips

Low-maintenance lawn care makes a lot of logic, as most flower gardeners would rather be tending their perennials. Lawns may be falling out of favor in some quarters, but there isn’t another ground cover that’s as kid, pet and sports-friendly as turf grass. And nothing sets off a lush flower garden as neatly as a green, well-cared-for lawn.

Strategies

With proper care, you can have a healthy lawn without spending a fortune on fertilizers and chemicals.
Maintain only as much lawn as you need – replace some lawn area with a patio, path or deck. Remove grass on hard-to-mow slopes and plant ground cover perennials and shrubs there instead. On larger properties, reduce mowing with meadow plants or special low-maintenance turf grass mixes that require periodic mowing once a month or several times a season.

Maintain edges

For flower gardeners, one of the key things is keeping turf grass out of planting beds. To do this, edge beds with a small trench six inches deep and wide. Clean up edging with straight spade or garden edger once or twice during growing season as needed. To minimize edging work each year, consider permanent edging, such as a row of stone or brick pavers at least six inches wide set into ground so a mower can run over the edge. This is more costly than plastic edging, but it’s way more attractive.