Low-maintenance landscaping can beautify your backyard and garden with very little time and effort. You can decorate your garden with a variety of low maintenance plants depending on your taste and what kind of flower suits the landscape of your garden.
The choice of flowers also depends on the climatic conditions you have in the area where you live, and it also plays a big role in whether your garden is fully exposed to the sun or completely in the shade.
However, your garden may be exposed to a constant amount of sunshine, and another part of the garden may be permanently shaded. So it will give you a greater choice of plants depending on how much sun or shade the plant needs to grow and flourish.
Cosmos
Cosmos are annual flowers with colorful daisy-like flowers that sit atop long slender stems. Blooming throughout the summer months, they attract birds, bees, and butterflies to your garden. Growing easily from seeds, cosmos even survive in poor soil conditions!
Cosmos grow as easily in beds, and they make great cut flowers. The plants can handle drought, poor soil conditions, and general neglect. They even self-sow, but not to the point of becoming a nuisance. This is a truly low maintenance plant.
Morning Glory
Morning Glories are often the first flowering vines people become familiar with. They are fast growing, annual vines. Morning glories are in the same botanical family as sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), but they do not produce edible tubers. The brightly colored flowers have a slight fragrance and are popular with butterflies and hummingbirds.
The vines grow by clinging with tendrils and will quickly cover nearby supports. They can self-sow effusively and may very likely come back the following year. Although some gardeners find them too aggressive, unwanted seedlings can usually be pulled out easily.
The long vines have bright green heart-shaped leaves and slender tendrils that cling to supports and just about anything else they encounter.
Morning glory flowers are trumpet-shaped, in shades of pink, white, magenta, purple-blue and bi-colors. The buds are twirled up tightly and unfold when the sun hits them, in the morning.
Morning glory flowers will only open when they are in direct sunlight, so an exposure with full sun will give you the longest amount of bloom time. If they are in a spot that doesn’t get sun until the afternoon, don’t expect “morning” glories.
Morning Glory will climb on most any vertical surface and produce new flowers each morning. Its vine grows best in poor soil with very little water.
Best grown in zones 9 to 11.
Hostas
Hostas are low-growing, clump-forming perennial plants grown mostly for their lovely foliage, but beyond this, a single description is almost impossible, since there are hundreds of varieties available in a wide range of sizes. Their foliage colors can vary from pale yellow to the deepest of blue-greens, with many variegated forms also available. Leaf shapes can be anything from long and sword-like to huge and round with corrugated textures.
Though mainly known for their attractive foliage, the plants also produce lovely flowers during the summer in fragrant pink, lavender, or white. Hummingbirds love the flowers.
Note: Slugs, snails, deer, and rabbits like hostas almost as much as people do. Keep this in mind if you have deer regularly wandering into your garden.
They grow up 6 to 28 inches tall and 10 inches to 12 feet wide. Best grown in zones 3 to 9.
Blue Flax
Blue flax is a short-lived perennial with blue-green needlelike leaves on graceful 2-foot-tall stems. Satiny sky blue flowers, borne on wiry stems, appear in late spring, last through mid-summer, and open fully only on sunny days. Small rounded seedheads form in summer.
This plant grows 18-20 inches tall. It rarely stands straight up, but rather leans at an angle. Flowers are pale blue, with 5 petals about 1-1 1/2 inches across, veined in darker blue. Each stem produces several flowers, blooming from the bottom upward. The seeds are produced on the lower flowers while those above continue to bloom. The stem is leafy when the plant is young, gradually losing most of its leaves as it matures. Leaves are narrow and about 3/4 inch long.
Grow in lean, well-drained soil and full sun. Cut back to sedum-like basal growth in formal plantings or leave spent flower stems behind to blend in with a naturalistic setting.
Agave
Agave plants offer an ideal solution for gardeners reconsidering their water-guzzling landscapes, while bringing the added benefits of drama and structure as well as texture and subtle color. Agaves grow best in the Southwest and Mediterranean climates, but are adaptable and can also be grown out of their zones in pots if given winter protection.
Thank God for agave. Especially blue agave, because that’s the base of tequila. Just like our bodies after a few shots of tequila, agave uses stored water to survive. Not only are we fans of agave, but so are hummingbirds. They do well in dry conditions and well-drained soil. Plant agave in your rock garden for a southern-theme.
Best grown in zones 8 to 10.
Beach Sunflower
This is one plant that doesn’t like to be over-loved. A native plant, it likes our sandy soil and is nicely tolerant of dry conditions.
It flowers on and off year round, with a fast spreading habit.
Beach sunflower is very effective as a lush, front of the border planting. It also makes a great surround for a palm, lamppost, fountain or bird feeder.
It’s best used in a casual landscape for its cottage garden appeal. The blooms attract butterflies, and make pretty cut flowers for the dinner table.
This groundcover is a fast grower and gets about 18 inches tall. It needs full to part sun to flower the most.
Zone 10 is best, where it will flower year round. You can grow it in Zone 9B but it may die back in winter and come back in spring.
Salt tolerant and drought tolerant, it’s a good plant for beachside locations.
This flower is often seen growing on sand dunes and can grow upright or lay down. It’s self-seeding and requires no care.