Thankfully, for both home owners and the planet, there is a lot of overlap between sustainable gardens and ones that require little in way of maintenance. Avoiding the need for gas powered mowers, hedgers, and other maintenance tools is one the tenants of sustainable gardening and one that can save you a lot of time and hassle. While not all low-maintenance gardens are sustainable, here are a list of management techniques that create both sustainable and low-maintenance gardens:
1) Extensive use of low-maintenance shrubs that are selected to fit the site conditions: Many shrubs require very little maintenance throughout the year and, if they are selected wisely, will thrive for many years in a garden.
2) Add a healthy layer of mulch: Applying a layer of natural mulch to a garden to 3 inches depth can greatly reduce the need for weeding. As the mulch breaks down it naturally builds the soils organic matter, helping to maintain good plant nutrition and building a healthy soil biota.
3) Reduce or eliminate lawns or use low-mow lawn types: Mowing lawns is the probably the most labor intensive task in a garden. Reducing the amount of lawn or moving to a low-mow lawn type can vastly reduce the amount of maintenance needed. This also reduced the amount of carbon and volatile compounds released in to the atmosphere from gas powered mowers.
4) Reducing or eliminating fertilizer use: Fertilizers are highly overused in the garden and this promotes the growth of weeds as well as leading to fertilizer leaching into groundwater and eventually lakes and streams, where nutrient overabundance has become a huge problem. In a healthy soil, with plants selected appropriately for the site, fertilization should be entirely unnecessary.
