Achieve a low maintenance garden that's high on interest

AS SUMMER heats up, are you reclining on a lounger, glass of lemonade in hand, admiring the view of your garden?

Or are your weekends spent rushing around weeding, deadheading, hunting slugs, mowing the lawn and experiencing a nagging doubt that there's something you ought to be pruning? If your garden is behaving like a diva, making far too many demands on your time, perhaps it's time to think about going low maintenance.

But is it possible to have a low maintenance garden which is still filled with texture, scent and the colour? Yes, says Jenny Hendy, author of a new Royal Horticultural Society guide, Easy-care Garden. She says that when she was approached to write the book she had a clear idea of what sort of advice she wanted to give. "When you hear 'low maintenance', people think of concrete and gravel and not a plant in sight. But I wanted the book to be about how to get a gorgeous garden without putting too much effort into it." She describes her own garden as a "mad, chaotic, low maintenance garden" where everything is rather overgrown and left to its own devices; but as a result the garden is full of bees, butterflies and nesting birds, proving that a low maintenance garden doesn't have to be a sterile one.

Hendy says the first question to ask yourself is how much time you can realistically devote to gardening. If you have a few hours at the weekend, you'll probably be able to fit in mowing the lawn and doing a bit of weeding and tidying. If you can only manage one gardening session a month, it might be time to wave goodbye to the lawn. In this case, paving, decking and gravel are all good alternatives, but you don't have to dig up all your plants. Pruning and deadheading tasks can be lessened by choosing easy-care plants; and consider installing an automatic watering system.

In Easy-care Garden, Hendy includes a directory of low maintenance plants to suit all conditions. If you're looking for something that won't mind being left to its own devices for a few years, variegated dogwoods, late-flowering clematis and rambler roses all fit the bill. Most evergreens require minimal pruning, and shrubs such as Buddleja davidii and Lavatera, which are cut back hard in spring, don't need any particular pruning expertise. Hendy recommends Clematis viticella, particularly "Etoile Violette", for those who are put off by the complicated pruning needs of some clematis. Viticella varieties are late flowering and simply need to be cut back to a foot off the ground at the end of January. Another favourite plant is Verbena bonariensis – "it has an autumn and winter presence and is very upright, so it doesn't take up a lot of room and yet it has this wonderful misty, see-through quality, which means you can get height into a small border without taking up lots of space".

It's worth knowing which plants are high maintenance in the pruning stakes, so you can avoid them. Forsythia, weigela, mock orange and large-flowering clematis are all plants that need attention at specific times of year and only certain parts of the plant are pruned. If you're not confident or don't have the time for research, stick to plants with few if any pruning needs.

Bulbs are a good ingredient in a low maintenance garden: "Dwarf and low-growing hardy bulbs, like crocus, scillas and small daffodils, offer a maintenance-free spring show," says Hendy. "For summer, plant alliums and low-growing lilies that do not need staking." To cut down on watering she suggests you choose plants like houseleeks, while succulents and silver-leaved plant varieties tend to be drought resistant. Pots should be avoided unless you're installing automatic irrigation.

As part of a low maintenance garden, paved and decked surfaces are easy to keep tidy and do a good job of keeping plants within their boundaries. Plant-free ways to bring colour into the garden include painted walls or trellis, while pebble mosaics or other decorative paving elements can add texture, and sculptures or interesting furniture provide highlights. "Plants don't necessarily have to be the main attraction," says Hendy. "Plants can be a focal point, or add colour and texture, but the main event can be the hard landscaping and style of the outdoor room."

It's also worth looking for plants that will provide year-round value. "Although there is an excellent selection of low maintenance flowering shrubs and perennials, choosing specimens for their architectural qualities, foliage, colour, and texture, rather than for their blooms, will ensure that the planting is interesting all year round," says Hendy. Plants that fall into this category include bamboo, Fatsia japonica, phormium and grasses such at Stipa gigantea and bronze-leaved Carex comans.

But what if you dream of having a wildlife garden or wild flower meadow? Still an option, says Hendy. Easy-care hardy summer annuals, such as eschscholzia and limnanthes, attract hoverflies, while bees love blue flowers, such as Californian bluebell. Shrubs like Verbena bonariensis and Buddleja davidii attract bees and butterflies, while berrying plants such as pyracantha and cotoneaster will provide food for birds.

And as for the question of having or not having a lawn, Hendy says it might be better not to have one in a tiny garden, whereas you could give some of a large garden over to meadow: "You could opt for an abstract curved edge between the mown grass and the long grass; mowing wide paths through long grass doesn't take long to maintain. Even if you haven't got wildflowers, the way the grass seedheads change colour can be very attractive and it subtly changes through the year."

So whatever low maintenance garden you opt for, make a few alterations and you could free up summer for sitting back and enjoying the view. sm

Easy-care Garden: Simple Steps to Success, by Jenny Hendy, is published by Dorling Kindersley, priced £6.99.