HOOVER, ID — Most people would say that having too large of a property to manage is a good problem to have. You’ll be suffering from success, so to speak. Yet this doesn’t dismiss the real management effort you’ll have to implement in order to correctly care for this property. A large house that isn’t maintained well, becomes dusty and decrepit, and goes months between cleans will be less comfortable to occupy than a smaller, well-curated home.
For this reason, moving into a household with a large garden, perhaps a much larger garden than you’re used to can seem good at first. But once you realize the maintenance effort it will require, it’s easy to feel a touch overwhelmed. Luckily, if you’re mindful, there are certain steps you can take to overcome this problem and make the entire process easier to deal with.
But what does that look like in practice? It’s not always clear. Thankfully, in this post, we intend to help you manage a larger garden than you’re used to. With that in mind, please consider:
Using Equipment That Expands Your Work Rate
A small push mower that is perfect for a small garden will leave you exhausted when dealing with an expansive green space, and this is where upgrading your equipment makes all the difference.
Finding a worthwhile retailer that can provide ride-on lawnmowers, long-reach hedge trimmers, leaf blowers that help you mulch, and a useful weed wacker is going to go a long way. You still need to work of course, but this will make sure the effort matches the scale. For instance, a riding mower doesn’t just cut grass and that’s it, but it also means you can keep a uniform cut across your entire open space and can even work in field-like environments.
Segment Your Space & Manage Plots
If you look at the garden as one big project, it can be a little much to deal with and feel like a huge annoying burden. Instead, it might help to break it up into smaller plots. This makes everything feel a little more manageable and even exciting to work on because one project won’t feel like a herculean effort to deal with. It also lets you treat different areas with different needs, which can allow you to utilize the space in smaller sections, instead of feeling as though the entire area has to be used for one purpose. You could have a flower bed in one corner and a vegetable patch in another, or maybe you’d prefer some wildflowers where the garden gets less direct sunlight. Down the farthest end, you could keep your compost so it doesn’t stink near your home.
Put simply – if one plot needs a lot of care, you can focus on it for a while and leave the rest for later and become more familiar with your larger garden space. Don’t worry, the rest will be attended to in time, but now you’re just settling in.
Understand Light Maintenance Requirements
It’s good to have a “minimum viable maintenance” assessment of your garden. Put simply, that could be “how little effort will it take to keep the garden in a good enough state.” This means you’ll identify where and when work should take place even if you’re busy.
After all, a big garden is going to have sections that need constant attention and some that practically look after themselves. It’s important to figure out what’s what. There’s no point wasting your time on areas that don’t need much upkeep while ignoring the spots that actually do, because you’ll feel like you’re on a treadmill that leads nowhere. For instance, lawns tend to need regular mowing, but areas with perennials or shrubs might not need much more than a trim or tidy-up from time to time.
Better yet, some areas can be curated to need less maintenance. A wildflower meadow, as we discussed above, needs less fussing, and it’ll reward you with an ever-changing, low-maintenance area that attracts bees and other wildlife. This is why you now see “wild areas” in many parks these days. Moreover, plants like ivy or ground cover plants can help reduce weeds, meaning you don’t have to spend all your time pulling them up by hand even with that aforementioned weed wacker.
Implement System Changes Such As Fixing Water Runoff
Some gardens need ground-level changes if they’re to be worked on or maintained well, and it’s good to inspect that after you move in. If parts of the garden always seem to flood or feel waterlogged after the rain falls, then it’s worth taking some time to address the issue of water runoff. It’s not the most exciting job of course, but making a few system changes now can save you hours of difficulty and even property damage later on.
As such, you might add a drainage system or redirect water flow with a French drain or simple ditch. Even just grading the soil slightly can help water move away from where it tends to pool. A rain garden area can also help absorb much of the water of certain areas and are often used as a very minor flood defense in some spaces. If you can implement this or suggestions like it, then the constant frustration of issues that recur will be less common.
Work On Simple Goals
We’ve given a good amount of advice in this post, but the truth is that you don’t have to fix everything overnight. Working on simple goals can be a good way to get familiar with the garden. Maybe you just want to make the closest area outside of your back door more comfortable for your children to play, segmenting the space off with a garden and adding outhouses for them.
Or, maybe you just want to fix the patio decking to implement a nice seating area to entertain from. Perhaps you finally have space for that massive grill you purchased, and your priority is to cook up a great deal of barbecue before the summer ends. We could hardly blame you for such an approach, but luckily this also means getting familiar with the fringes of your garden if you can. We all have to start somewhere.
With this advice, you’ll be sure to tend to a larger garden than you’re used to.
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