How to Look After a Bigger Garden Properly
Some people dream of having a huge outdoor space attached to their property, especially if they’ve never had one, but when they finally have that, it can be hard to know what to do with such a vast amount of outdoor space.
When you have a larger outdoor space, it can feel like it is much more difficult to properly look after and maintain it, or know where to start with transforming it into the space you’ve always dreamed of. There is plenty that you can do to make your life easier, while still taking care of your responsibilities, ensuring that you have a beautiful outdoor environment that will last for years to come. Here are a few pointers that will help keep you firmly on the right path, making sure to consider various factors.
Consider irrigation
Some people would prefer not to have a lawn at all as this is simply going to require too much watering to look after it as well as required. However, another potential option that you could look into is going to a company such as FIS Outdoor to help get the proper equipment to look after your outdoor space. Plenty of direct advantages are involved in going down the path of irrigation, including convenience, cost savings, and more. So, bear it in mind as a potential option that could be worthwhile.
Ensure you plant everything in the right place
Getting the planting in the right place is bound to give you a major helping hand as well. For example, there are some plants that prefer to be out in the sun, and there are other that enjoy shade. Some are going to be better equipped to be protected against sudden rainfall, but this is not the case for all of them. Ultimately, careful and proper planning will make your life much easier and lead to fewer struggling plants. When everything is the wrong place, this is inevitably going to make your life a lot harder than it needs to be.
Consider some larger potted plants
It tends to be a lot easier to look after plants in pots rather than those that are put directly in the earth. Instead of having several smaller potted plants, you could look to the larger ones as this keeps plenty in the same place and you don’t have so many watering concerns that you need to consider. Ultimately, it is certainly worthwhile thinking about the positioning factor as well. After all, you can put larger potted plants in an arrangement or style that you prefer that looks great.
Choose some simple plants
Another one of the helpful hints that you can follow is to opt for some simple plants rather than going for anything that has complex watering needs. For example, a few evergreen plants tend to be much easier to look after in comparison to those that are seasonal. Ultimately, you want to make your life easier – unless you have a great deal of time and energy to dedicate to your outdoor space. Some plants are also more naturally resistant to weeds, which can be even more useful in ensuring that you don’t have to do so much weeding work in your garden, which can certainly end up being on one of the more time consuming aspects.
Choose combinations that work well together
You should also consider the combinations of plant that work well as part of a pairing or a group. For example, some plants are naturally suited to feed off one another, whereas others are more likely to compete with one another for the available space. You should also think about the plants that work well together in terms of an overall color scheme. Ultimately, you are looking to create an outdoor space that looks fantastic, as well as one that thrives.
Learn more gardening techniques along the way
It is also bound to be helpful to keep on learning different gardening techniques as you go. There are obviously going to be some mistakes, but the difference is that great gardeners will learn from them and prevent these from becoming an issue that will keep cropping up. Ultimately, taking good care of a garden comes down to the gardener and the steps that they are taking for proper outdoor space care. You can also learn from other gardeners and exactly what they are doing to ensure that their outdoor space is well cared for. You can also attend shows and look at the gardens of others. Ultimately, taking inspiration from all around you can certainly help boost your skills as a gardener.
Ensure your lawn easy to cut
Once again going back to the issue of the lawn, you should do what you can to make it easy to cut. This way, it is much less likely to become wild and overgrown. For example, a permanent edge around the lawn can give a major helping hand. A series of bricks or paving stones around the outside is a great example of a way to keep a lawn nicely contained. You can also seek out smoothing out corners and angles into shapes that are not complicated to cut.
Create areas that are low maintenance
There are some areas that will require a greatly reduced amount of maintenance to look after them. For example, a well placed deck or patio requires cleaning, but it doesn’t need you to do too much in terms of regular maintenance work like some plants and flowers do. Great outdoors spaces tend to be a mix, but they are also areas often divided into zones. For example, this decking or patio area may be the part where you are going to do a great deal of your entertainment etc. Of course, you can go too far with the low maintenance – and simply putting artificial grass everywhere may be a step too far as it means that you no longer have a beautiful, natural space.
Use climbers to extend your garden upwards
As well as extending your garden to all four of the corners dotted out, you could also look to use vertical space at the same time. One of the best options and ways of doing this is to use climbing plants to use everything from walls and fences to even trees. There are plenty of options here including Virginia creeper, ivy, and hydrangea, that can all be highly useful in transforming what may have been a fairly boring surface beforehand to one that looks simply superb. If you opt to paint or stain the surface ahead of time, this can be even more effective in creating a look that is both low maintenance and high impact at the same time.
Try mulches for reduced watering and weeding
Another potential option you could look into is mulching, which means that you are using another type of material – typically gravel or bark chippings – to reduce the amount of bare soil between the different plants. One of the major advantages of this technique is that it will prevent weeds from growing and cut back on the odds of water evaporating. This means less weeding and watering and helping the garden look a lot more attractive in general – without needing to put in nearly the same level of work into it.
Allow some bits of the garden to become wilder
One of the other techniques that has commonly been trumpeted over recent months and years is simply allowing the garden to become wilder. This can be majorly useful in ensuring that various species survive and thrive within it. You could leave a certain patch of the garden to get wild – or extend this out as much as you would like. As well as being an area that can encourage a great deal of wildlife, it can also help ensure that you don’t have to put in so much maintenance work all over the place.
Larger gardens and outdoor spaces can be tricky to look after, so you want to do everything you can to ensure that the area looks at its very best without common issues cropping up. Ultimately, having a great plan of what you will do with the space is bound to help out, but you also need to keep boosting your gardening skills and enhancing your abilities to look after what you have in front of you.
At the same time, putting plants in places where they are most likely to thrive is also bound to be useful rather than risking them dying out for any reason. You should also look into automating your outdoor space wherever this is possible. For example, right at the start of the blog post, there was the issue of irrigation that was discussed. Undoubtedly, it can play a major role in ensuring that larger lawn areas do not require so much sustained time and attention to keep them green, shiny, and in the very best condition possible.
