Lower Property Maintenance 5 Outdoor Ideas

There are many homeowners with gardens who look for ways to lower property maintenance over time. In this article we offer five ideas to reduce your outdoor maintenance tasks, costs and time required to maintain your property. Read on to learn more.

The Outdoor Upgrades That Actually Lower Property Maintenance Over Time

When most homeowners think about outdoor upgrades, they think of what’s aesthetically pleasing at the moment. A new set of patio furniture, a fresh layer of mulch, perhaps some seasonal annuals lining the walkway. But what no one tells you when you first become a homeowner and get accustomed to outdoor upgrades is that the most valuable things you can do are the ones that decrease your time and money spent on the yard each season.

That’s because many outdoor spaces are designed to require constant upkeep. Weekly mowing, daily watering in the summer, replacing flowers that die seasonally, and constantly reseeding patches of grass that the dog dug up or that muddy area where the rain pooled. Other improvements work the opposite; they may cost you something initially and then save you time in fact they can lower property maintenance, watering, and repair costs for the next several years.

automated irrigation system can lower property maintenance — An automated garden irrigation and sprinkler system can lower property maintenance in the summer months especially

Photo credit – Q. Hưng Phạm

Our Top Tips to Lower Property Maintenance

Automated Irrigation That Adjusts To The Weather

Manual watering – at least in theory – works well – until it doesn’t. You forget one night in the heatwave, and instead of coming home to a lush lawn, you’ve got brown crispy patches. You water just before a surprise rainstorm and feel like a fool. Timed systems are basically ineffective too because if you’ve watered after it rained two days ago, it doesn’t know any better.

Modern irrigation systems with weather sensors could change your game. They check the conditions locally; if it did rain overnight, it won’t water. If it’s super dry, it will still water. Some use soil moisture sensors to determine whether they need to run. Water savings are real – 20%-40% less than those on fixed schedules – but the biggest win is no more having to worry about it.

The installation isn’t cheap. Depending on your property size and how many zones you need, you’re looking at a significant investment. But if you’re already hand-watering or running old sprinklers on guesswork, reaching out to local sprinkler companies for an estimate often shows the payback happens faster than expected, especially in areas with high water costs or drought restrictions.

Replacing Grass With Hardscaping (In The Proper Areas)

No one suggests paving over your entire backyard, but that stupid strip of grass between the driveway and fence? The awkward piece on the steep slope that’s too hard to mow? These are traps for maintenance.

Replacing high-maintenance grasses with pavers, gravel paths, stone patios takes away mowing, watering, and fertilizing in areas that were probably already struggling. The problem is knowing where it makes sense to do so – not wanting your home to look like a parking lot, but at the same time not wanting to coddle grass in areas that aren’t thriving.

Ideal candidates are areas that get a lot of foot traffic (which destroys grass anyway), slopes that make mowing challenging or dangerous, or areas that are perpetually shady and patchy no matter what. A well-designed hardscape also drains better than struggling grass would – less pooling problems and erosion preventing your landscape from collapsing.

The upfront cost hurts initially – especially for nice materials with proper base installation – but once complete, you’re looking at real ways to lower property maintenance, your reward? 10+ years of little to no maintenance beyond an occasional broom or hose.

Native Plants That Don’t Need Constant Coddling

garden with big hydrangea bushes — If you have a garden with a tendency to gather water consider planting hostas and hydrangeas which will thrive unattended – lower property maintenance by matching plant to climate

Photo credit – Ozge Alpaslan

This one makes sense, although many people fail to comply. They opt for what’s pretty at their local nursery rather than what’s native for their climate zone and wonder why they spend three years trying to keep tropical plants alive during winters they’re not meant for or summers that bake them almost to death.

Native plants have developed in your specific location. They can withstand the typical temperature fluctuations, usual rainfall patterns and allergens/pests without needing special treatment. Once established (typically after one full growing season), most natives need little watering, rarely need fertilizer treatments, and attract helpful insects for those other natives in your yard.

The biggest mental adjustment is realizing that native landscaping often looks less neat than the tropical-based landscaping that’s often featured online. You’re working with grasses, perennials, shrubs that may go dormant in winter or look wild compared to nice boxwood hedges. But getting used to spending one hour of non-intrusive maintenance per month instead of every weekend trying to keep incompatible plants alive is worth it.

Appropriate Drainage Solutions Before They Create Foundation Issues

Water will always find the path of least resistance; if your landscape doesn’t direct this away from your home, you set yourself up for disaster – and expensive ones at that. The last thing anyone wants are muddy footprints lining their house entryway – but standing water kills grass and creates a breeding ground for mosquitoes and eventually makes its way into your foundation.

Most drainage problems can be solved by French drains and channel drains or by regrading sections of one’s property to determine an appropriate slope. It’s not exciting work; there’s mostly invisible results (which is kind of the goal). But once water gets where it needs to go, there are no more muddy sections that never dry out or repeated erosion at the same places or ugly homes resulting from fears about what’s going on with your foundation from excessive moisture.

Costs vary significantly based upon how bad your drainage issue is and how much dirt needs to be moved; simple solutions may require an extended downspout and dry creek bed in one’s landscaping while others may require professionals to regrade or install an underground drainage system. Regardless it’s an upgrade that you do once and forget about for decades.

Strategic Tree Placement for Natural Climate Control

trees planted around a garden — Strategic planting of trees in your garden can lower property maintenance

Photo credit – Max Vakhtbovycn

Trees are slow-motion investments. You plant them early on and wait a few years until all of a sudden you have natural shade protecting outdoor living spaces from oppressive temperatures and decreasing cooling bills.

The reduced maintenance comes from knowing what will thrive where. Deciduous trees on the southern and western sides of the home will block oppressive summer sunshine but allow winter light through; conifer trees positioned as windbreaks will diminish heating costs and protect smaller plants from harsh elements. A proper tree in a proper spot means not having to focus on grass getting too brown with superfluous heat or worrying about supplemental costs from excessive need.

The only challenge is planning ahead – while it’s great to have trees planted when they’re small, that sapling you plant today will still take 5-10 years until sufficiently providing shade. Additionally, you don’t want to plant too close to foundations or power lines – or choose kinds with aggressive roots that tear up piping and sidewalks – but when done right, you’ve created an asset that provides property value increase while cutting down maintenance costs over 50 years.

Final Thoughts on How to Lower Property Maintenance Over Time

None of these upgrades are inexpensive in the moment; if you have a budget for outdoor concerns and the things that reduce maintenance typically cost more than cosmetic changes at first. But consider them strategic initiatives to lower property maintenance and cost over time. A new set of patio furniture is $300. A correctly installed irrigation system or drainage solution is $3,000+.

But here’s what’s different after a couple of seasons: you’re not spending every weekend fighting with your yard. Your water bills stabilize. The pesky issues that annoyed you daily resolve finally once and for all – and when calculating what you’d be spending on average annually for constant repairs or water waste or man hours or contractors, suddenly the math looks different.

It’s about prioritizing what’s currently hitting you in the pocketbook hardest – a constant need for hand-watering? Then irrigation makes sense; consistent drainage issues ruining your landscaping? Fix that first; spending hours on mowing grass that’s never going to grow anyway? Then install hardscaping.

You don’t have to do it all at once – you can choose one or two items that will help alleviate your biggest day-to-day frustrations of yard work and so lower property maintenance in vital stages – and it’s likely they’ll pay back sooner than you think.