Trees, shrubs, and flowers create a beautiful backdrop for your Reading, PA, landscape, and can even help to express your personality and style. One consideration when choosing the right greenery for your home is the landscape maintenance required to keep them thriving and looking their best.
While all landscapes require some level of care, of course, low-maintenance plantings can be the key to reducing overall landscape maintenance requirements while still creating beautiful flower beds and gardens. What matters is choosing the right plants to have installed in your landscape. Read on and we will show you some of the best low-maintenance plantings to choose for your outdoor living space.
Choosing the Right Plants
Hardy perennials and shrubs are the preference when prioritizing the creation of a low-maintenance landscape. These type of plants don’t need to be replaced every year, unlike annuals that require digging up portions of the garden gardens, removing old plants, and installing new plants every spring. Once your perennials are well established, the only care they may require is watering during periods of drought, and pruning or cutting back once a year. Some good choices are:
Hosta
Known for their lush foliage and easy care, hostas are a favorite among landscapers and homeowners alike. This herbaceous plant comes in a variety of different cultivars, colors, shapes and sizes, and are low-growing and clump forming, making them great flower bed fillers. Hostas generally come in blue, green, or gold (yellow) varieties and can be ideal for shady areas of the landscape.
Garden Phlox
Available in up to multiple colors, phlox is a favorite flowering garden plant known for its blooms in white, pale blue, pink, violet, or bright red. Many of these varieties are fragrant, and different varieties can either grow tall or short. Creeping phlox is a great option to provide groundcover as it spreads rapidly.
Black-Eyed Susans
These bold blooms are known for their golden petals and dark, dramatic brown purple centers. Daisy-like in appearance, these native plants offer a beautiful way to bring color to your garden.
Echinacea
These herbaceous flowering plants are a part of the daisy family and produces flowers with large showy heads. Great for adding as a border plant to sunny gardens, they also are excellent for attracting butterflies and birds.
Ornamental Grasses
Available in a variety of different shapes, sizes and colors, ornamental grasses are a great way to fill out your garden without adding extra care. Japanese silver grass and pampas grass are just a couple of varieties that can help to add color, texture, and visual movement to the overall look of your outdoor living space.
Ferns
These shade-loving beauties are another great option for filling out your garden. An excellent companion to hostas, ferns can offer an evergreen, easy-care way to bring more texture and color to your landscape.
Nepeta Walker’s Low
Also known as catmint, these fragrant perennials make excellent border plants and work well in both full sun or partial shade. With dramatic blue flowers and sophisticated gray-green foliage, this perennial offers color, texture and visual interest to your garden without requiring extra care once they are installed.
Related: Low Maintenance Lawn Care Solutions in the Wayne Township, PA, Area
