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You have heard about low-maintenance landscapes, but I want to talk about no-maintenance plantings. These are situations where you know the area will receive minimal care, if any at all. I have put in a number of these and would encourage you to try it sometime.
Your project could be an area next to a school, church, community center or any other ugly spot that needs attention. First, you need to figure out whom to ask for permission. Usually, folks are happy to have a volunteer work on their landscape.
They will want assurance that this isn't going to cost them anything. This is your opportunity to check out whether they have any resources that could help you obtain soil amendments or plants. They rarely have cash, but often have connections. Perhaps the school can get free compost from the city or a PTA member can get plants wholesale for you.
During this process, someone may come forward and offer their help. This is great and you want to encourage it, but not count on it. Usually, this individual will move, change jobs or simply lose interest in the project within a year. Still, if the person can do some watering the first year after planting, they will be invaluable.
To be honest, no landscape is going to look good forever with no care. However, with good soil preparation and proper plant selection, you can do pretty well. If possible, do the soil improvement in the summer and install the plants in the fall. If everything has to be done at once, do it in the fall.
One of my first attempts at a no-care garden was the family plot in an old cemetery near Poulsbo. It looked bare and neglected. We went over one weekend in late summer with gardening tools, bags of compost and mulch, and a bunch of plants. We watered well during planting, mulched heavily and crossed our fingers that the fall rains would come on schedule. It did fine and we try to get back once a year to do a little weeding and grooming. Though not the most beautiful landscape in the world, it is a 100% improvement.
My most recent project was a traffic circle last summer. That's the worst possible time, but I recruited a corner neighbor to water. With one of the driest summers and falls on record, we lost a few plants. None-the-less, it should look even better next year.
My plant choice was restricted by the city's rule that growth stay below about two feet for visibility reasons. They allow trees that are limbed up to allow drivers see past them. The city's original planting plan included a ginkgo, but it couldn't survive being run over at least once a year. I wanted to incorporate some big rocks into my plan to solve that problem, but the city doesn't allow that - something about public safety.
So what should you plant? I always include herbs like lavender, sage, rosemary and thyme. They are inexpensive, drought tolerant and look pretty good all year. Sage and thyme have cultivars with gray, white, cream, yellow, red or purple variegation on the leaves to add color to the bed. I chose a tricolor sage and two thymes, 'Pink Chintz' and 'Silver Posie.'
I usually use sedums too, like Sedum spathulifolium, especially the purple leaf forms, and Sedum spectabile. In this planting, I tried Sedum ewersii. It has bluish-gray foliage tinged red at the edges and pink summer flowers. I just discovered that it loses much of that handsome foliage in the fall and looks somewhat bare for the winter.
I wanted color in the traffic circle, so I added perennials and bulbs. The bulbs will bloom all spring. The thymes will be covered with flowers and then the dianthus, with its little carnation-like flowers, will start. For summer, the sedum flowers will be joined by those of yellow 'Bitsy' daylilies, a long-blooming, dwarf cultivar, and then purple Liatris or gayfeather.
If you want height, you might include rockroses (3-5 ft.), Osmanthus delavayii (slow to 6 ft.), Arbutus unedo 'Compacta', strawberry tree (to 10 ft.) or Hollywood juniper (to 15 ft.). These are all evergreen and drought tolerant once established.
If you look around, I'm sure you can find a spot in your neighborhood that could benefit from your effort. Try it, even if it's a not a place where you can commit to maintenance.
Hortsense: Managing plant problems with Integrated Pest Management
