Ask the gardener: How to ‘work smarter, not harder’ in your gardens and yards

As a teenager, yard work was presented as a chore to complete. The lawn had to be mowed, the leaves had to be raked, and mulch was to be spread as directed. Perhaps due to my interests lying in other places, I bristled at the strain on my adolescent time. Rarely did I take the time to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Later, as an adult and as a professional gardener, I understand the tension between the time needed to complete garden projects and affording the moments of enjoyment, respite, and calmness that time spent in gardens gives us. I suspect I am not alone in struggling to find the right balance between efficiency and enjoyment.

Phrases like, “work smarter, not harder” and “learn to work with the process” come to mind, but what do they really mean? Surely, no one is suggesting hard work is unintelligent or unworthy. And exactly which processes are being referenced? This week’s column seeks to unpack these phrases a bit further, along with how our garden aesthetics contribute to the workload. Furthermore, I will suggest ways in which we can gain more time to experience our gardens and less time feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work.

Let’s start with some perspective about plants. It may appear simple, but plants are individual living organisms with a drive to survive all their own. I am not suggesting plants have a will of their own, but that they are exquisitely attuned to their environments and react accordingly. Sometimes, they grow exactly in the way we intend, more often, though, they have their own designs and don’t follow our instructions.

In short, gardens are dynamic and always will be. All gardens require a range of maintenance — informal gardens involve deeper understanding of plants and ecology while formal gardens require static regiments intended to keep them looking the same. These larger cycles unfold over longer time spans, highlighting that working with plants is really a long-term planning exercise and that some understanding of how plants grow will help us gardeners to anticipate what might occur in the future.

Formal gardens

Humans have long sought to impose order over nature, and the history of formal gardens represents such efforts, tracing back to its origins in Western Asia, Persia, Egypt, and ancient Greco-Roman cultures. These gardens used symmetry and geometric shapes to separate human spaces from the chaos of nature beyond. They were status symbols of wealth and power.

Maintaining formal gardens requires a lot of time and repeated tasks like edging, weeding, and clipping hedges — often multiple times a year. Looking at suburban landscapes now, I see miniature versions of that formality.

To save time on such repetitive, and frankly unexciting garden tasks, why not replace your clipped hedge with a dwarf or slow-growing selection? The shrub grows to the desired height, and you no longer spend time pruning it into unnatural shapes.

I am intentionally contrasting formal gardens with informal ones to draw attention to the maintenance tasks needed to keep a garden looking the same, year after year. This garden ideal stands in opposition to the reality that gardens are dynamic.

Informal gardens

But informal gardens need maintenance, too. Weeding, editing, learning to work with the abundance and exuberance of plants is integral to shaping the future of informal gardens.

In my last column, we discussed managing the weed seed bank by strategically cutting some weeds and pulling others. Even desirable plants can become too much in an informal design, so the same approaches apply. Cutting seed heads before they disperse helps reduce the amount of new seedlings the following year. Editing or transplanting helps keep design intent intact while embracing that gardens will change over time.

Observe where leaves accumulate and plan for perennials that can push through the deep layers. Conversely, if wind patterns keep an area of soil bare or mossy, use that as an opportunity to plant small, delicate blossoms that would otherwise be swamped or covered by leaves. Informal, less tidy-looking gardens generally support more wildlife, especially if managed without pesticides or fertilizers. All of these examples are working with the process rather than against it.

Lawns

Let us talk about lawns next. They have utility as gathering spaces for family and friends and surfaces on which to pursue sports or a serious game of tag with your children. They should, however, not take up all your time.

First, consider small pathways or odd corners where you have to push and pull the mower inefficiently. Aren’t these areas ripe for conversion to a lawn alternative? Steep slopes, where pushing a mower is difficult, if not dangerous: these areas are also good candidates to convert to a groundcover or lawn alternative. By streamlining the area that needs to be mowed, you will spend less time doing it and more time enjoying the possibilities a lawn affords. This is an example of working smarter, not harder.

A garden is never finished, rather always a work in progress. Loosening our tolerances and thresholds for weeds, and for the perception of untidiness, will help us focus on the aspects of our gardens that bring us the most satisfaction and joy. Spending time among plants deeply benefits humans physiologically and psychologically, often in subtle and unseen ways. Access to gardens creates joy, especially knowing you have had a hand in its creation and continuing evolution.

Ulrich Lorimer is the director of horticulture at the Native Plant Trust in Framingham. Send your gardening questions, along with your name/initials and hometown, to [email protected]g.