I have noticed that folks that no longer have the energy for maintaining the gardens, simply replace their beloved gardens with turf and hire the mow and blow crew to take care of the lawn.

I am not ready to know what that's like so will be trying to mow early to avoid the heat and simplify the planting so that their watering needs are grouped in zones.

Gardening is good exercise and it makes me happy, I'll probably do it as long as I can :-)

I would be thinking of tweaking ...how to design low maintenance into the garden, simplifying the tasks (with tools, equipment or chemicals) and also hiring additional help for the less skilled jobs.

hire kids to mow and weed; replace with plants that need less care; keep the 7 hours of enjoyment with beverages

I'm in my late 50s and cannot do heavy labor -- I spend 1/2 hour a week weeding and picking up trash (but I live in the desert and have low care, native plants and a lot of rock). Other than that, I hire out when I can.

A fair chunk of my business involves consulting with seniors on ways to reduce the maintenance in their gardens. And it is not just seniors that are looking for a low maintenance garden. That is probably the number one request of virtually ALL new clients :-)

A low maintenance garden doesn't mean your are left with a garden that is sterile or boring. It only means you have taken some time to carefully consider plant choices and placement. It may mean you remove/replace plants that spread too aggressively, self-seed with abandon, exceed their alloted space (requiring frequent pruning), present frequent disease and pest issues requiring chemical intervention or those that generate a lot of routine work and fussing - deadheading, staking, dividing, tidying, raking, etc.

There is a hierarchy of maintenance associated with plants roughly associated with size and length of life. The longer a plant lives and the larger it grows, typically the less maintenance it requires - provided it is properly sited to begin with. Trees generally require less maintenance than shrubs; both (woody plants) typically require less maintenance than herbaceous perennials and pretty much anything requires less maintenance than growing annuals or edibles. And evergreen usually requires less maintenance than deciduous. That doesn't mean you should completely avoid plants that require routine maintenance - just to be aware what might be involved and then accommodate for that by simplifying their care. That may mean something like a raised bed or containers for edibles or annuals and locating them where their access is easy and attention can be given without exerting extra effort.

If you can afford it, an investment in streamlining the garden care may be in order. And not just with new plant selection. Automated irrigation systems can be huge time and effort savers. Attractively hardscaped areas can reduce both lawns and planting areas yet still compliment a garden plus provide an area where one can sit and enjoy their reduced gardening efforts.

There is a fair amount of info online regarding low maintenance gardening. Or gardening with disabilities, if that pertains. Some of it good, some not so good (as with all online info!). But if one has a large and complicated garden, it may make sense to hire a professional for some specific advice on how to go about reducing the work involved. And again, if affordable, there is nothing wrong with bringing in some seasonal help. Bringing in a crew (or just a helper or two) twice a year in spring and fall for a general clean-up and a maintenance once-over can make all the difference in the world. And keep you happy in your garden for years to come. Gardening IS recognized as an excellent physical activity to delay aging, not to mention a very satisfying emotional boost, but it makes sense to do it in a way that does not exceed your ability or desire.

I'm 57 and widowed, purchased a small house on very neglected corner lot (with great potential!) last year, much to my grown children's' chagrin - I KNOW they were afraid they'd get sucked into yard work, especially the mowing, which I figure will be harder for me than anything else as I age. BUT I have plans to gradually "remodel" the yard, by myself, into a beautiful haven that I can, by retirement in my mid to late 60's, manage with clippers or garden hose in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. I will mow for as long as I can, then hire out. I've walked thru surrounding neighborhoods studying what does and doesn't work in this area. My goal is to gradually "lose" at least half of my (extensive) turf by cutting more and deeper beds around foundation and the entire perimeter, plus install one or two interior berms with plantings, and a wide front path using flagstones or gravel. I will extend patio in back to add more usable entertaining space and further reduce turf. This fall I'm planting at least six trees: magnolia, crepe myrtle, dogwood, Bradford pear, and a couple dwarf evergreen varieties to eventually provide shade for understory plantings like small, drought-resistant perennials - and will add ground covers for interest and weed control. Bigger-size shrubs such as lilacs, camellias, mock-orange, elderberry along the fence lines where they can fill in without looking too messy if I don't get around to pruning. Laying down landscape material in beds is important for weed control, and installing plastic or metal edging between your beds and grass is needed to prevent grass from re-invading beds. The idea is to spend the time, money and and labor now, and have less of the backbreaking, hands and knees work later. Will add a drip irrigation system if I can afford it, and realistically will need my handy son-in-law Jack for help with this! Hope these suggestions help.

Let me just say that landscape cloth in beds DOES NOT give weed control, since weed seeds come from the top, not from buried seed. What you have is a nightmare of rotting fabric twisted into plants. Ask any experienced gardener. Good groundcovers are the answer between shrubs and trees--not aggressive ones, but good ones that are weed suppressing. I am a big fan of Geranium macrorrhizum for shade, G. 'Biokovo' and 'Karmina' for sunny areas. Another good one is Ceratostigma plumbaginoides (Leadwort) though it's not evergreen and does need to be cut or mowed back in fall or early spring as with most perennials. It handles both full sun and shade in my zone, and I mow it to the ground in late fall.

Jenny.wren, don't plant an ornamental pear, Bradford or any other cultivar. They have become highly invasive in many parts of the country and the tight branching means that they essentially self-destruct after about 15 years. A heavy snow or ice storm will bring then down even sooner.

I'd be very careful about removing turf and making large borders. This will create more work, not less. We are in the process of removing borders and reinstalling turf to reduce maintenance time.

"I'd be very careful about removing turf and making large borders. This will create more work,"

Not necessarily :-) It depends entirely on what you select to plant in the larger planting beds. Some broadleaved evergreen shrubs and a complimentary, well behaved ground cover is far less work than tending to a lawn.

I'm not at all convinced of that, at least in this climate. Lawn gets mowed. That's it. I have about an acre and a riding mower. It takes me about an hour and a half to mow it, and it isn't at all a tiring or annoying job. If you can drive a car, you can mow the lawn.

The shrub border are a different matter. I have yet to experience in any way a ground cover that prevents tree seeds from sprouting. By the time most saplings are tall enough to be seen above the pachysandra, they are too big to be easily pulled, so it is cut and paint with herbicide. This is annoying. Then there are the trees that sprout in the netherworld beneath shrubs. Finding them when they are small requires crawling underneath the bushes. If you wait until they show up above the bushes, they are 5,6, or 7 ft tall, and it isn't a simple matter of clipping them. And that isn't even mentioning the poison ivy that likes to grow in the same places.

I like the flowering shrubs. They have a nice mass to them when in bloom, but I no longer think of them as a low maintenance solution to anything.

(I am the original poster) I like flowers, say perennials and annuals most. I like flowering shrubs and trees next. I like ground covers (in general) still less, and I do not like lawn at all. If it is green in the lawn area and growing I mow it as needed and that is about it for the lawn.. My landscape at my home reflects that system of priorities. I think I have more flower beds than most - virtually all the perimeter directly around my house and about 70% of the perimeter of my lot is planted, somewhat at least (no one seems to plant along the road here). (I am guessing the hard scape including house and driveway total is about 4000 sq ft., the beds (mixed shrubs and flowers) are about 4000 sq ft, and the lawn about 15000 sq ft. Of the 4000 sq ft of beds (mostly around the back) about 1000 sq ft is empty (of anything specific - too shaded by a stand of trees) and about 500 sq ft is in ground cover - (doing well under the same trees). Over time, I will only minimally increase anything that needs heavy maintenance (I plan that at least), and I will plan to make life easier (by mulching and not adding any new beds that do not serve a real purpose). If I can hire out the labor that I currently do myself, which is relatively unskilled, and not a lot of hours each week, I can probably be fine once I can no longer do everything myself.

My original comment/ question was brought on by the 12 or so hours I recently spent "decommissioning" a compost pile maybe 6 cu yards that had been in place for over three years. It was a lot harder than I expected (I loaded wheel barrows by hand, obviously, but I also had to unload it a shovelful at a time - no room to dump things). In the future I will keep each year as a smaller batch of compost and use it up more regularly, rather than accumulating it that long. I have been looking at the forum "garden restoration" and it seems a lot of people when they can no longer do things themselves, just stop doing things, which is a shame. If "reasonably" maintaining the landscape is too expensive for me, down the road, that will be part of the decision about aging in place. I would miss my yard, but it is probably better to leave than to let it badly deteriorate. I say that now, and I hope to work at my yard at least the next ten years, but this has been useful to start to consider how to make later life better. (When I was unloading the pile I noticeably needed more and longer breaks than ever before on similar kind of work.)

wow, that's a huge area (to my mind); I'd have a hard time keeping all that up even as a young person in the best of health. If I was concerned about this, I'd be considering downsizing to a smaller home and yard; and certainly with less annuals and stuff like that.

This seems a highly personal decision with no right or wrong answers. Each gardener has to work it out for him/herself. My only comment would be to plan ahead and try to be in tune with your physical aging. Recognize it is happening and consider your Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Write it down, just for your own benefit, make it real. Then when the decisive moment comes, it won't be difficult.

Hi

I live in s. florida so very different game than your area . i have always been a plant collector and peaked at 500 plants in pots lol Also had 3 aviaries 4 water gardens even an outdoor terrarium 6 aquariums lol have always hired the front lawn done with a goal of just neat

I developed lung cancer in 2000 so have been downsizing ever since. I was supposed to be dead by 02 but as you can guess that didn't happen lol

Downsizing has been incredibly difficult for me though I have removed all animals Found excellant homes for all but a single parakeet who lives in a 12 x18 foot enclosure lol he is 14 and couldn't live in a cage so hopefully I'll outlive him As to the plants I still have around 100 pots mostly orchids most of which reside in a shadehoue .Like me it's getting old and needs serious repairs . I would repair it in a hearbeat if it weren't for the other problems but I am 75 and they tell me I won't live forever no matter what.

Your post remined me I need to make a decision!!! lol

Anyway good luck with whatever you decide There don't seem to be any easy answers!! gary

I agree with Mad. Trees and vines come up under the "skirts" of shrubs and are extremely difficult to get at and remove. Grass may be boring, but mowing is a snap compared with tending flower borders, Imagine, down the road, that you will have half the energy that you have now. How many borders would you want to/be able to keep up?

My personal experience is two opposites: one home with a tiny, but sweet, almost fully automated Mediterranean garden, and another with 2 acres in a very wet subtropical climate where weeds can grow 30 ft. in a year -- yes, from seedling to tree. You'd have to be completely insane to plant a vine here, where they will engulf a 60 ft. tree in about a year. The tropical place is my garden playground, but a challenge to keep up with even now, and I pay for basic maintenance -- mowing and weedwhacking. Imagining this challenge 15 years from now, I have to be realistic and accept that it may have to go up for sale. But what great fun it is now, growing tropicals and creating a serene garden from what was once a massive tangle of giant weeds. And how pleasant, too, to spend time in the tiny garden relaxing in the shade and admiring the hummingbirds as they flit through. Right now I can do both; eventually only the latter.

One final comment: downsizing is a wonderful experience. It reduces stress, frees the mind, simplifies life, produces expanses of free time, possibly eats up less cash, too.

"One final comment: downsizing is a wonderful experience. It reduces
stress, frees the mind, simplifies life, produces expanses of free time,
possibly eats up less cash, too."

Amen to that!! The most liberating experience I have ever undertaken. I cannot begin to describe the improvement in my quality of life after selling off a large house and complicated garden (and a vast amount of unnecessary belongings) to slip into a smaller scale/smaller footprint residence with just enough room to plant a very manageable garden. Everything that kim said is perfectly true :-)

I've been reading this with interest. I'm at the stage where giving up the gardens is more of a reality than I dreamed would be my lot. I have a very large urban yard; different gardening areas and lots of grass. Health reasons and not being able to do much myself anymore - digging, bending, carrying, walking on uneven ground - is sealing the deal. I've had a very reliable mowing, edging, etc. service but will probably hire a landscape company to rip out most of the beds and put down sod. I would rather look out over nicely tended grass than unkempt forlorn gardens.

Doing the same with my downsizing of earthly possessions - all that stuff accumulated over time and much of it put aside for that "rainy day". The rainy day has come and what has gone out of the house so far has not been missed.

If I could keep up, I surely would. But I no longer can. It's not a question of trying to manage in stages anymore.

This is a great question that many gardeners didn't consider enough when putting in a garden, including me ;)

For your garden in zone 5, I would consider put in some hardscape, paths, benches and pergolas, etc. Small to medium trees hardy in your zone to add to the bone of the garden in winter. Perennial shrubs where your flower beds are right now...

I had irises, peonies, hydrangeas in my garden, underplanting with lavenders and geraniums. No pests and easy care are the rules. If the plants survive, great and welcome! If not, I consider it an opportunity to try something else. You know how it is with us gardeners, always more plants than we have time and space :)

Best wishes