Everyone wants a beautiful yard. A mix of purposeful landscaping and excellent planting choices can turn your backyard into your own signature slice of paradise that will be the envy of all your friends and neighbors. Unfortunately, many of the best backyard landscape ideas will cost you dearly in money, time and energy.
Odds are, you don’t want to spend every weekend performing upkeep on your backyard to keep it beautiful but you don’t want to be ashamed of a boring, poorly kept yard either. The good news is, there are some great Minnesota landscaping ideas which don’t require countless hours of upkeep. During our 32 years performing premium landscape design and installation across the Twin Cities, Ground One has come up with some neat low maintenance landscaping plans that will allow you to be proud of your yard without breaking your back.
Ultimate Low Maintenance Backyard Designs For Minnesota
Keep It Native
The hardest part of landscaping in Minnesota is contending with our miserably cold winters, which kill off many kinds of plants. To avoid this problem when landscaping, focus on a design that incorporates plants which are native to Minnesota. A landscape which emulates a Minnesotan prairie can be uniquely gorgeous and show off a little MN pride. Plant native trees like red maples, native shrubs like American cranberrybush and native perennials like purple prairie clover and wild geranium for an authentic local landscape in your backyard.
If you really want to go the extra mile, you can even scatter some local rock like Lake Superior agates throughout the landscape!
Rocks Rock
Another great idea for low maintenance landscaping is to use as much rock as possible. Grass needs to be mown and fertilized, mulch rots over time and allows weeds to grow, but rock lasts forever, requires almost no maintenance and makes it much more difficult for weeds to invade your yard. Cover as much of your backyard as possible with pavers and rock beds, and throw in some trees and shrubs for color. You won’t have to fertilize or mow, you’ll barely have to weed, all you’ll need to do is water.
Most modern landscapes incorporate heavy usage of rock. Whether you’re a busy young homeowner or a bored empty nester, upgrading to a modern, rock-heavy landscape design is a great way toalter your backyard for the better.
Go Evergreen
Many deciduous plants struggle to keep up with Minnesota’s hot summers and cold winters. Evergreens don’t have that problem. Arborvitaes, junipers and pines are all beautiful evergreen trees and shrubs which you can use to decorate your home’s landscape. You can go for the modern look, with tidy rows of globed arborvitaes, or plant in a denser and more naturalistic style so that it looks like you’ve got a pine forest in your backyard. One of the best parts of planting evergreens is that they stay, well, green in winter! While other trees and shrubs will lose their leaves and look like scraggly skeletons from November to April, evergreens will look appealing in your backyard every day of the year. If you have kids, they’ll love having snowball fights with evergreen trees to use for cover.
Play Off Nature
Perhaps the best backyard landscape ideas are those which fit in naturally into the environment around them. Instead of trying to fight with nature, allow it to influence how you set up your landscape. If you live beside a pond, make a water garden along the shore. If you have bad soil where little grows, adapt with a backyard that’s mostly covered in rock and only sparse, hardy plants. If your property backs up to a forest, create a shade garden with hostas along its edge.
Choosing plants that will thrive in their natural environment is a fast ticket to success for low maintenance landscaping, and the end result will be a splendor to behold.
Professional Landscaping Service in the Twin Cities
If you want to make designing and installing your low maintenance landscape even easier on yourself, hire the professionals to do it for you! The experienced landscapers at Ground One are happy to collaborate with you in order to create the easy-to-care-for backyard that your heart desires. Call Ground One today for the greatest low maintenance landscaping service in the Twin Cities!