12 Low-Maintenance Garden Border Ideas

Reviewed by Kathleen Miller

When you're looking for low-maintenance garden border ideas, consider the color, texture, bloom time, and placement of your plants. Your choices will also depend on whether the border is close to a path, walkway, or driveway, or if it's tucked in the backyard around a garden spot. Read on to learn about low-maintenance garden border ideas that will fit your climate and growing zones, the size and shape of your yard, and your unique garden style.

Things to Consider When Choosing Low-Maintenance Garden Border Plants

• Keep it simple with blocks of color.

• Plant perennials that come back yearly and fill in with colorful annuals.

• Choose groundcovers and low-growing plants that won't need much pruning.

• Look for drought-tolerant plants.

• Consider stone or another edging to keep the border neat.

Use Color Block Design

Large blocks of color can be a very striking and easily implemented strategy for the garden border. This simple mix of ajuga and anemones offers a rich burst of violet-blue in this flower bed, right at the border for maximum impact. Also try forget-me-nots which bloom profusely in pale blue in spring (deadhead them to keep them from reseeding too much, but new plants are easy to pull up).

Showcase Spring Bulbs

Designing with spring bulbs offers lots of flexibility for three seasons of blooms and beauty. They're great for the front of the border for a showy garden in early spring, like this one with multiple beds showcasing tulips and daffodils at the edge of their borders. Once your bulbs begin to die back (in April and May) there's room for additional perennials to pop up and fill in. Good choices to plant near bulbs include plants with small root areas and foliage that sit up off the ground, like hostas, daylilies, asters, and ferns.

Bring Colorful Foliage Forward

Plants with colorful foliage are a great way to have low-maintenance color at the front of the border. Artemisias provide silvery tones, heucheras provide a wonderful range of colors, euphorbias come in a range of colors and textures, and lower-growing sedums also have a range of foliage colors in blues, greens, greys, and purples. Here we see silver tansy (Tanacetum haradjanii) and Euphorbia myrsinites melding their striking colors of blue-grey and chartreuse together. Annuals with colorful foliage include coleus and caladiums.

Add a Shade Border

The shade garden need not be barren of color. The border of this circular shade garden catches the eye with vivid clumps of burgundy heuchera, variegated euonymus, and airy light green ferns.

Implement Mediterranean Style

In the temperate climate of southern Europe, herbs have the perfect growing environment. if you have sandy, loamy soil, plentiful sun, and a growing zone on the warmer side, consider some fragrant culinary herbs for your border. Oregano, thyme, rosemary, savory, tarragon, lavender and many other useful herbs grow as perennials in the right conditions. These lavender gardens in Spain create a perfumed paradise for visitors, with the huge plants overflowing into the walkways.

Play With Height

Usually one sees shorter plants at the front of the border, but tall ones can work too. The key is to choose plants with a small crown and a light airy form, allowing for a view of the plants behind them. This might include agapanthus, alliums, camassia, fairy lilies (a bulb that comes up in early autumn), heucheras, flax, anchusa ('Dropmore'), delphiniums, rose campion, anemones (pictured above), and globe thistles. Annual cosmos are also tall flowers with feathery stems and delicate blooms.

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Add Low Hedges

This lush garden in Sweden has paths connecting one area to another. The borders along this path have short, chunky boxwood hedges clipped to stay square and neat. The angular shape complements the round and organic shapes found throughout the garden.

Plant Perennial Mums

Keep the show going with perennials that flower late in the season. Perennial mums are a reliable source of vivid color: order them from a reliable nursery in the spring for blooms in the fall, and the plants will increase in size each year. The striking contrast of these yellow zinnias and purple mums is a showstopper for the autumn border.

Choose Drought-Tolerant Border Plants

If you're in a dry or desert climate, or simply want a more drought-tolerant border, there's a large variety to choose from. Euphorbias and succulents like creeping sedums or hens and chicks are an easy way to have a lush, low- maintenance border. These plants spread quickly but not aggressively and there are many flowering varieties. In this California garden, drought-tolerant plants including yarrow, euphoria, and nepeta (flowering catmint) are a perfect choice for times of inconsistent rainfall.

Incorporate Creeping Plants for an Organic Look

Creeping plants like euphorbia, low-spreading sedums, dianthus (especially spreading varieties like 'Firewitch'), thread-leaf coreopsis, or short asters (like 'Wood's Blue') can spill over the border edge in a fetching way, creating an organic looking design. Keep blooming perennials looking neat by deadheading which also encourages more blooms: this dianthus will put out a second or even third round of blooms after spent flowers are trimmed off.

Use Uplifting Miniatures

Many perennials have low-growing, dwarf, or miniature versions, including irises (pictured are 'Bright Blue Eyes'), columbines, asters, daylilies, sedums, and even roses. Choosing these shorter plants allows for more possibilities for three seasons of blooming perennials at the front of the border.

Create a Green Border

This shady border features a variety of plants with vibrant green foliage, showcasing beautiful shapes and textures, including variegated irises, heuchera, hosta, and pulmonaria. Note the color variations include not just shades of green but stripes, spots, edges and centers. These plants also produce colorful flowers.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest way to create a garden border?

The cheapest way to create a garden border is to use perennial ground cover plants and edge it with inexpensive materials such as rocks or wood.

What type of garden border requires the least maintenance?

The type of garden border that requires the least maintenance would be tough, resilient, and drought-tolerant plants that do not require any deadheading, trimming, or pruning.

What shrub requires the least maintenance?

There are many low-maintenance evergreen shrubs to consider, some that grow low enough for garden borders. Boxwood and creeping juniper bushes require little to no maintenance, for example. If you are looking for an easy flowering shrub, consider forsythia, though it may need a bit of pruning to tidy it up.

Read the original article on The Spruce.