Maintenance is Gardening

Post-Planting Commitment

All gardens require a degree of upkeep and that dreaded "M" word: maintenance. You can do the work ( and it is work whether you love or hate doing it as weeding and pruning and the myriad of other gardening tasks require physical and mental effort) or pay someone to do it, but it's got to be done. Or else, why bother having a green space you can call your own?

An effective garden design that's sympathetic to the user's (owner's) needs and wants goes a long way to reduce these maintenance requirements. A bit ( or sometimes, a lot ) of mulch does help with reducing weeding and watering but with the right combination of light and moisture conditions, weeds will still grow and, even, thrive. Soaker hoses, while ugly, do work in getting water down to where it counts: the roots.

This post looks at a garden I designed and planted just a few months ago as profiled in my post titled A Mid Toronto new front garden installation: Another Toronto Front Garden Makeover and shows how weeds, like all other life forms, are opportunistic and that leaving a new garden alone even for a short time is generally not a good idea as it leads to more...well, work!


Here's a picture of the garden I planted on May 27, 2017:

Midtown Toronto gardening services new low maintenance perennial garden after 

And here's what it looked like on July 22, a little less than two months later:

Avenue Road Front Garden Cleanup Before

Will things look better from another angle?

Midtown Toronto new full sun perennial garden after 

Nah....

Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Cleanup Before 

The silver lining is that all the newly transplanted perennials are establishing themselves very nicely but then again, so have the weeds.

Here are some other "before" pictures showing you what greeted me as I walked up to the house. I was astounded by the sheer quantity and variety of wind-borne weeds which germinated and are thriving since the new perennials were planted merely two months previously.

Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Clean up Before 

Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Cleanup Before

 Avenue Road Front Garden Cleanup Before

After the cleanup....

Avenue Road Front Garden Cleanup after

Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Cleanup After 

Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Clean up After 

 Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Cleanup After

Avenue Road Toronto Front Garden Cleanup After 

Just to give you some context, the owner rents this house and lives off-site so only occasionally drops by. The tenants, naturally, aren't involved with any maintenance aspect so the garden fends for itself. I strongly suggested to the owner that another layer of mulch be applied soon. In time, the perennials should be large and wide enough to shade out most weeds from germinating but until then, the garden is rather defenseless in such an exposed site.

I get the feeling I'll be getting another call in a few months...