How to Reclaim Your Yard with Drought Tolerant, Low Maintenance Plants
Many customers come into the nursery looking for low maintenance, drought tolerant plants because, lets face it—everything grows like crazy here which can be a blessing and a curse. Keeping up with the yard takes a lot of energy. Sometimes we burn out physically or financially trying to keep up. Getting an overgrown yard back in shape can feel like pushing a boulder up a mountain. If you’re overwhelmed looking at your yard and not sure where or even how to start, here’s some tips for recovering your yard and a list of some low maintenance plants to use if you choose to replace things.
First, start small and choose something that’s the least out of control. Be rewarded with small accomplishments. Once you maintain one small area, move on to the next area that is the least out of control. Don’t worry about the biggest mess, it will still be there a few weeks from now. It can be frustrating but resist the urge to start there, you’ll get tired trying to start there and not want to work on the rest of your yard. After reclaiming a second area, revisit the first. Hoe the soil of small seedlings until your groundcover comes thick again, then move on to a third section. Frequently revisit previously maintained sections in the order you started before moving on to a new section. This may be painfully thorough, but once you have all these small sections maintained, you will have more energy to tackle the big mess. Your thought will be, ‘Well, I have the whole yard looking good already, it’s just this last push.’ You will come so far in the progress of your yard, it will motivate you to finish--if you’re like me at least. I thrive off a sense of accomplishment and seeing things through to the end.
If you’re going along maintaining your sections and you realize that certain plants are just too much to maintain, here is a list of low maintenance, drought tolerant plants we carry at the nursery. This list does not include everything that you could possibly plant, certainly we would need a bigger nursery for that ?
Groundcovers:
Shrubs:
