I love my gardens! But maintaining them has gotten to be more than I can manage. I suppose this summerâs abnormally wet weather brought the matter to a head. Thanks to all the moisture, my vegetable garden has been in overdrive, producing tomatoes, squash, eggplants, etc., at an alarming rate. My perennial garden morphed from a reasonably well-tended state in May to a weedy, tangled, overgrown mess in July. All the foundation plantings have grown an insane amount this summer and desperately need to be pruned. And donât get me started on the weeds!
As an arthritic octogenarian, I am physically not up to handling some of the tasks my landscape demands of me. Although I stubbornly try to tough it out, I also donât tolerate heat and humidity as well as I used to. But it was fighting a losing battle with crabgrass this summer that finally made me realize â I need to do more than just declutter my landscape. I need to downsize it!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DOWNSIZE?
Most people think of downsizing in the context of moving to a smaller house or apartment that requires less time and energy to maintain. But for my purposes, I am using the term in the context of reducing the amount of time and physical effort needed to maintain my landscape.  In other words, I donât want to abandon my gardens. I just want to make them more manageable for me at this stage of my life.
REASONS FOR DOWNSIZING THE LANDSCAPE
As Iâve explored this subject with my friends and fellow gardeners, Iâve discovered that there are lots of reasons for downsizing landscapes. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
I donât have time to garden anymore. Many of us lead busy lives juggling careers with family obligations, maintaining our homes, traveling, volunteering, etc. Gardening is an excellent way to decompress from all the stresses thrown at us. But gardens canât be planted and then simply ignored. They require our ongoing attention.
My garden has become too large to manage. Our gardening ambitions often override our better judgment as to what we can reasonably take care of. As plants grow to their mature size, they often exceed their allocated space. Before you know it, your flower bed is too small to accommodate your existing plants or to add any more new ones. So, you double the size of the bed or perhaps you establish a new bed. At some point, you realize the sheer size of your garden exceeds your ability to tend to it.
I need to get my property ready to sell. Part of getting a property ready to sell includes making sure the landscape shows to best advantage. A well-designed and maintained landscape can add a great deal of value to your property, perhaps as much as 15 percent of its perceived value.  However, an extensive landscape may scare off a prospective buyer as they consider the potential time, effort, and cost involved in its upkeep. To avoid losing a sale, you may need to consider simplifying or scaling back some of your plantings.
My garden no longer gives me a sense of accomplishment. A certain sense of pride and accomplishment comes in growing your own vegetables or having a beautiful flower garden. But there can come a time when you simply grow tired of dealing with droughts, heat and humidity, insect pests, deer damage, or any of the countless other gardening challenges.
I am no longer able to garden due to my age and physical limitations. Staying active is vital to our health and wellbeing as we age. Gardening is regarded as excellent exercise. According to the Virginia Cooperative Extensionâs Publication 426-721 on The Value of Landscaping, âStudies have shown that one hour of weeding burns 300 calories â the same as walking or bicycling at a moderate pace.â But with age comes infirmities that may limit oneâs ability to deal with the more challenging aspects of gardening.
APPROACHES TO DOWNSIZING THE LANDSCAPE
The approach you take depends on the size and make-up of your gardens and your intended objectives. Your objective might be to:
- Reduce the square footage currently devoted to gardens.
- Eliminate fussy, high-maintenance plants to reduce your gardening workload.
- Simplify your landscape by replacing multiple species or varieties with a select few.
- Identify ways to make gardening easier, such as using raised beds that allow you to garden standing up, for example.
Before embarking on downsizing, itâs helpful to develop an inventory of your plants and their locations on your property. This will help you organize your thoughts about what to keep and what to eliminate.  Consider using categories that make sense for your particular garden – for example, trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, ground covers, and even bulbs. It may not be necessary to include annuals unless you have garden space devoted specifically to them.
Prioritize. If you have multiple gardens, then prioritize which ones to keep and which ones to either reduce in size or eliminate. For example, if youâre growing fewer vegetables each year, then it might be wise to remove all or some portion of your vegetable garden. This decision is made easier if you have alternative sources for fresh vegetables, such as a well-stocked local grocery store, farmerâs market or even a Community-Support Agriculture share with a local farm.
Replace perennials with shrubs or trees. If you have perennial gardens, then you know how much time and care must be taken to keep them looking good. One of the best ways to reduce your overall gardening labors is to replace selected perennials with woody plants. Shrubs and trees require a great deal less investment of your time and energy to maintain.
Replace high-maintenance perennials with low or no-maintenance choices. If you just canât give up your beloved perennials, then ask yourself these questions about each of them:
- Is it water-wise or must you provide a lot of supplemental water to keep it looking healthy?
- Does it flop over or require staking or trellising?
- Is it drought and heat tolerant or does it go limp in hot, humid summer weather?
- Is it disease resistant or do you spend a lot of time treating it for diseases?
- Is it bothered by a lot of insect damage?
- Does it require a lot of deadheading or other maintenance?
- Does it look uninteresting after it has finished blooming?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then consider either eliminating the plant altogether or replacing it with one that requires little or no intervention from you to keep it looking good.
Place greater emphasis on foliage rather than flowers. Many perennial species bloom for only a few weeks and then they are done for the year. But the loss of color can be compensated for by incorporating plants with interesting foliage. For example, in sunny gardens, yucca (Yucca filamentosa) âColor Guardâ is a long-lived, maintenance-free plant that adds texture, interest, and color all year round. Many grasses, such as switch grass (Panicum virgatum), pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) and feather reed grass (Calamagrostis acutiflora) âKarl Foersterâ offer similar attributes. In shade gardens, Tiarella (foam flower), Asarum canadense (wild ginger) and fern species offer interest and texture with little to no maintenance needed.
Get help. If you are able to find a volunteer to help you garden occasionally, terrific. If not, and if you are able to afford it, hire someone. Just a few hours of help periodically can make a big difference in your gardens. If the person you hire is new to you and youâre not confident of their skill level, convey to them exactly what you want done and how you want it done.  Here are a few tips that can ease your concerns about having a stranger working among your plants.
- Make a list in advance of gardening tasks to be completed.
- Group the tasks by whatever category makes sense to you: Pruning, weeding, deadheading, planting, etc.
- Provide complete instructions. Until you are satisfied your contractor is as plant-savvy as you would like, be specific. For example, you are likely to get better results if you say âPrune the Virginia Sweetspires back by a thirdâ instead of âPrune the Virginia Sweetspires.â
- Review the task list with your helper so that thereâs no confusion about what needs to be done. For pruning tasks in particular, discuss how the task will be carried out. They may envision using a battery-operated hedge trimmer to give your Virginia Sweetspire an overall buzz cut, which looks unnatural. You, on the other hand, might have envisioned just pruning out a few scraggly branches with hand pruners. So, itâs important to make sure you and the contractor concur on how the task will be completed.
Use groundcovers instead of mulch. If you spend a lot of time (and money) mulching, consider replacing the mulch with ground covers that will spread and fill in around shrubs, trees and perennials. They will protect the soil from erosion, smother weeds, and provide color in the landscape. Best of all, they are unlikely to require much maintenance, if any.
Go native. If you have a large lawn to maintain, consider replacing a portion of it with a meadow garden containing native grasses, ground covers, and wild flowers. But do your research first! Make no mistake — meadow gardens do require a lot of upfront thought, planning and patience. But once they are established, they generally only have to be mowed once a year in the fall.  To learn more about meadow gardening, see this article on the Piedmont Master Gardeners website. It provides a clear-eyed, balanced viewpoint of the pros and cons of establishing a meadow garden.
AND FINALLY
The decision to downsize a garden can be an emotional one, considering the affection we develop for our plants and all the time and effort we spend maintaining them. I was reminded of that by renowned gardening writer Sydney Eddison in her 2010 book Gardening for a lifetime â How to garden wiser as you grow older. Her insights came from downsizing her own garden when she was in her 70s. To the best of my knowledge, she is still alive and, hopefully, still gardening.
As I begin the process of downsizing my own gardens, I have a lot of tough decisions to make. The transformation wonât happen overnight. It will occur in stages as I contemplate each of my plants and the role itâs meant to play in my landscape over the long term. As I âeditâ and restructure my gardens to make them easier to manage, this will be an opportunity to focus on the plants I really love. I might even find that downsizing wasnât such a bad idea after all.
Featured Photo Credit:Â Pat Chadwick
SOURCES
Gardening for a Lifetime â How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (Eddison, Sydney, 2010)
The Right-Size Flower Garden: Simplify Your Outdoor Space with Smart Design Solutions and Plant Choices (Mendez, Kerry Ann, 2015)
Downsizing Your Garden, University of Illinois Extension
Low-Maintenance Landscaping, University of Missouri Extension