The Truth About Low Maintenance Gardens

Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’, Centranthus ruber, Salvia nemerosa ‘Cardonna’, and Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’ intermingle with late July blossoms in a Boulder, Colorado landscape.

By Emily Morris

August 24, 2020

Contrary to popular belief, the most densely planted gardens require the least amount of maintenance. Misguided yet widely accepted gardening techniques have left landscapes in a broken system that treats gardens as loose clusters of individuals, instead of interdependent communities. With such a disconnect from natural growing patterns, it’s no wonder the modern landscaper spends his days in a battle with weeds. The new narrative is one of stewarding plant communities and bringing nature into our urban setting in a way that captures the essence of its biology and character.

How Plants Grow In Nature

To understand how we can evolve planting, design, and stewardship techniques, we should first understand how plants grow in nature. At their core, plants are social beings. They grow in communities made up of diverse vertical layers that provide stability at the root and ground cover level, and structure and seasonal beauty in the more visible layers—all mixing to create microclimates for organisms. The idea of plant sociability was originally proposed by Richard Hansen and Friedrich Stahl and formulated into a scale from 1 to 5, rating plants by their aptitude to grow as individuals, in small clusters, or in mass blocks. Hansen and Stahl’s scale captures a way of design thinking that works with the nature of plants, instead of against it, and should be a powerful tool in planting design. Unfortunately, it hasn’t yet taken hold of widespread practices.

Centranthus ruber, Ajuga reptans ‘Bronze’, and Muhlenbergia reverchonii ‘Undaunted’ hug a garden pathway in Boulder, Colorado.

The Flaws of Traditional Gardening

The solitary tactics applied to these social organisms have led us down the road to the very thing we want to avoid: maintenance. When we treat plants as individuals and thrust them into large swaths of mulch, nature intervenes to fill the empty spots in the soil, mainly in the form of weeds. This style of gardening results in super high maintenance landscapes that perpetuate the disconnection from urban and natural spaces. At Tree of Life, we’re working hard to change this norm and plant in a way that creates long-lasting, self-sustaining, low-management gardens.

How Tree of Life Designs Gardens

We look at the garden as a system within the landscape that reacts to both its inner dynamics and its surroundings—a living matrix that unveils surprises of color, texture, and composition to the viewer throughout its life. Our nature-mimicking planting style keeps weeds out and the required work low, and we facilitate a relationship of stewardship between the garden and the gardener, rather than one of maintenance (which implies the need to perform repetitive, nagging tasks that focus on taming plants on an individual basis). Stewardship addresses the plant community as a whole and denotes an air of pride and enjoyment. For example, a maintenance task could refer to pulling weeds around a singular shrub, while stewardship would require the removal of weeds only in the early stages of garden establishment. In another example, a gardener could maintain a plant by cutting it back multiple times a year, or he could steward the landscape by cutting it back just once a year in the spring. This tactic allows plants to display their showy architecture and seedheads throughout the winter, allowing a fourth season of color and texture into the garden (and creating a byproduct layer of organic matter that can act as mulch).

In Summary

At Tree of Life, we’re changing a long-standing narrative about landscape design that largely ignores plants’ needs and natural growing patterns. With horticultural and design experts like Thomas Rainer, Roy Diblik, Rick Darke, and Piet Oudolf helping us lead the way, we see a future where self-sustaining gardenscapes sprinkle our urban and suburban spaces without all the upkeep we’re used to. In time, the garden will do its job. If only we let it.