Why Natural Gardens are (by Nature) Lower Maintenance

How we follow nature to create landscapes that mostly look after themselves.

I sometimes see a meme on social media that says native plants are low-maintenance. Like a lot of things said on those online compost heaps, it’s not true.

But it could be.

The thing is, it’s not the plant, it’s what you do with it that makes it low or high maintenance. Here are ways we create gardens and shorelines that are easier to manage.

Right plant, very right place

The big difference between natural gardens and traditional horticulture is that we work with ecological processes rather than against them. What we’ve considered “gardening” is often a trial of strength, trying to get a plant to thrive against its natural instincts and holding that “finished” garden in stasis. This requires time, fertilizer, and brute force.

In contrast, natural gardens go with the natural flow. We understand what the plants will naturally do and use a gentle hand to guide them.

It starts by choosing a plant suited to its environment – the right sun, moisture, and soil conditions. With native plants, we go further, choosing a plant that naturally grows here. Right plant, very right place.
When it comes to management (we call it that instead of “maintenance”), we wait and watch. We see what the garden wants to do and intervene only if needed. We allow plants to self-seed or let volunteer species arrive. We don’t get upset if some plants turn out to be the wrong choice and fail to thrive.

We let the garden do its thing according to the seasons, gently steering it in a direction that both we and nature like.

More plants, more layers

If you look at some human-made landscapes, we see isolated plants, each surrounded by a sea of dyed mulch. It looks neat and tidy and nothing like nature.

Visit the edge of the forest and you’ll find lots of plants growing on top of each other in layers. Natural landscapers take cues from this behaviour.

The most common design style we use is the “matrix.” When we design like this, we make heavy use of groundcover species – the matrix that underpins the rest of the planting. In most designs, at least 50% of the entire planting is this layer.

The big benefit of the matrix (besides design coherence) is that it naturally suppresses weeds. We use mulch as a weed suppressant in the first year, but after that, the matrix takes over.

Next, we choose plants that play nicely with each other. These are often plants you’ll find growing together in a natural community. We do the same, choosing plants that have characteristics – root forms or reproductive strategies, for example – that are complementary rather than competitive.

Back in nature, plants are seldom a monoculture. The only exceptions are extremely stressful environments where only one plant has the right adaptations, or where an invasive plant with no natural enemies manages to out-compete others. Contrary to the “nature red in tooth and claw” image on TV, plants in natural communities support each other.

Putting it together

Let me get one thing straight: natural gardens are not zero maintenance. They still need some tending. Indeed, in the first year or two, while your landscape is still finding its feet, you’ll need to do some weeding and maybe some watering.

But with the right plants put together in the right way and, more importantly, with the right attitude as a gardener, we can create a landscape that for the most part looks after itself.
Just like nature does.