Best Low Maintenance Shrubs for Easy Growing
For those with a busy schedule, low maintenance shrubs are great. They ensure a wonderful garden with minimal effort. In this article, we reveal eight low maintenance shrubs, from great landscaping shrubs to fast growing and small shrubs. They offer an ease of care and are uncomplicated, making your garden beautiful but also manageable.
Boxwood
There are a lot of types of boxwood bushes but Boxwood is a classic, slow-growing shrub that tolerates a variety of growing conditions including sun and shade. Requiring minimal pruning, it can be shaped into hedges or topiaries, adding a structured beauty to any garden. Boxwood's versatility and ease of care make it a popular choice for growing in your garden.
Carissa Holly
Carissa Holly grows to a height of 0,9m-1,2m (3ft-4ft) with a comparable spread. This compact little evergreen shrub is known for its glossy, deep green leaves. Carissa Holly requires very little pruning to maintain its dense form, and its drought tolerance makes it a good low maintenance bush. The bush is a perfect choice for creating low hedges or borders.
Azalea
Azaleas are popular flowering shrubs that color your landscape with a burst of pink blooms in spring similar to Nandina shrubs. After growing it we saw that they are relatively low maintenance, requiring only occasional pruning and not much water. These dwarf shrubs have the ability to thrive under the shade of taller trees making them a practical choice for various ornamental bush or woodland garden settings.
Inkberry Holly
This small and low maintenance shrub with glossy leaves is a year-round, evergreen beauty that is also considered deer resistant. The bush is a friend to wildlife, offering shelter and berries for birds, yet its leathery leaves are a turn-off for deer. It also has small white flowers.
Read more about deer resistant shrubs.
This compact shrub is adaptable to a wide range of growing conditions, it’s a slow grower that requires little pruning. It can be shaped into topiaries or left to its natural form, offering a low maintenance, evergreen option.
Dwarf Alberta Spruce
Juniper
Junipers are known for their hardiness and drought tolerance. These small evergreen bushes with their textured foliage provide year-round green color and a variety of shapes and sizes available to diverse landscaping designs. These low-care evergreens also have small blue berries that are edible.
Russian Sage
Russian Sage is a perennial, is an ideal late summer bloomer that towers elegantly over the garden, its purple bush flowers are similar to lavender and other blooming flowers. Sages' silvery white stems and grey-green, dissected foliage are pungent smelling and very deer resistant, but pollinators are regular visitors.
Barberry
Barberries are valued for their vibrant foliage, available in shades of green, yellow, and red. They are drought-tolerant, known for their deer resistance, and require minimal care, making them a bold yet easygoing addition to your landscape. These bushes are often used for small hedges in front of houses.
Forsythia
The big bush with yellow flowers is perfect for filling your yard in the spring with a burst of yellow blooms, but is also great for low maintenance landscaping and as a shrub in cntainers. Its branches can stretch up to 3m (10 feet). Plant it in the fall or early spring, in full sun to partial shade, and let the sunshine in. Forsythias can grow as much as 24 inches in a year and that's why they are considered as fast growing shrubs.
Oakleaf Hydrangea
An amazing leafy but also easy-care plant, Oakleaf Hydrangea with its green leaves, and white blossoms, similar to the Inkberry Holly, transforming any garden into an amazing space. It prefers moist soil and colder climates, although it can tolerate summer weather. With minimal care, you get a colorful display throughout the year.
Sources
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Oakleaf Hydrangea: Hydrangea quercifolia | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)
Carissa Holly: Carissa Chinese Holly (Ilex cornuta 'Carissa') (uada.edu)
Inkberry Holly: Ilex coriacea | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)
Azaleas Maintenance: The Complete Azalea Guide: How to Grow and Care for Azaleas (thespruce.com)
Boxwood: Buxus - Wikipedia
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Calin is in the garden industry for 5 years now and knows a lot about gardening and plants. He owns this website and responsible for most of the content.