How to replace lawn with a low maintenance garden

A lawn is the one part of the garden that asks for something every single week, and most of us never sit down and add up what it actually costs. Mowing, edging, watering, feeding, and then the weeds that turn up anyway. If you're giving up an hour or two of every weekend keeping a patch of grass alive so you can walk across it, that's a decision, and it's worth making it on purpose rather than by habit.

You don't have to rip the whole lot out either. Most people get the biggest win by taking out the part of the lawn they never actually use, which is usually the strip down the side or the corner behind the shed that never grew properly anyway.

Start with the part you don't walk on

Walk the yard and work out where you genuinely put your feet. The kids' patch stays, because grass is still the best surface for that, and so does anything you sit on. Everything else is a candidate, and because it's the part you never look at closely, it's also the part where getting it slightly wrong doesn't matter much.

Mark it out with a hose laid on the ground before you dig anything, and leave it there for a week so you can see the shape from the kitchen window. Curved edges read better than straight ones and they're easier to mow around if you're keeping grass on the other side.

Ground covers, and an honest word about which ones cope

There's a long list of ground covers that get recommended for low water gardens, and a fair few of them are only low water somewhere wetter than here. Blue star creeper and native violet both want steady moisture and a bit of shade, so they'll do beautifully under a tree on the cool side of the house and then go crispy in an open bed by January. Creeping thyme and the prostrate natives handle heat far better, and so do the native tussock grasses, which want cutting back once a year instead of once a week.

The honest version is that a ground cover takes a season or two to knit together, and until it does you're weeding between the plants. That's the trade. You put the work in once at the start instead of every weekend for the next 20 years.

Mulch does more of the work than anything else

Mulch is the cheapest thing on this list and it changes the most. A layer around 75mm deep keeps the soil temperature down, slows evaporation right off, and stops most weed seed from ever seeing light. Go much deeper than that and water struggles to get down through it. Go much thinner and the weeds come straight up.

Lucerne and pea straw break down into the soil and feed it on the way, so they suit beds you're planting into. A chunkier bark or a compressed mulch block holds its shape longer and suits paths and the areas you just want to stay tidy. Whichever one you use, pull it back a few centimetres from the stem of anything you've planted, because mulch packed hard against a trunk keeps it permanently wet and that's how collar rot starts.

Paving and gravel for the bits that do get walked on

Lawn that gets constant traffic never looks good anyway, and that's the part worth paving. Concrete pavers on a compacted base give you somewhere to put the table without dragging a mower over it, and a gravel path does the same job for less money as long as you edge it properly so the stones stay where you put them.

Plants that suit the climate rather than fight it

Grevillea, kangaroo paw, correa and westringia all cope with a hot dry summer and heavy clay in winter, which is most of what this district throws at a garden. They want a decent soak while they're getting established and then very little once the roots are down, and the commonest way to kill one is kindness, because a native planted into rich soil and watered daily will often rot rather than take off.

Phosphorus is the other one worth knowing about. A lot of Australian natives are sensitive to it, so a general fertiliser with a high phosphorus reading can do them harm even while it's doing the rest of the garden good. Read the analysis on the back of the bag before you spread it anywhere near them.

A drip line and a timer, and then you can stop thinking about it

Once the beds are planted, watering is the last job that still needs you standing there holding something, and a drip line takes that away. It puts the water at the roots instead of over the leaves, which cuts evaporation and cuts fungal problems at the same time, and it runs perfectly well off an ordinary garden tap. Peg it down properly, run it underneath the mulch rather than over the top of it, and put a tap timer on the front so it comes on early without you being awake for it.

Early morning is the right setting here, not evening. Water sitting on leaves and soil all night is exactly what fungal disease wants, and a garden watered at first light dries off as the day warms up.

Take the mower off one section of your weekend at a time and you'll notice the difference long before the whole yard is finished. Everything I know about gardening I got by having a go and then asking somebody who knew better, so read this as somebody still learning rather than somebody finished.

Shop related products

Did you know we also stock bales of lucerne, pea straw, sugar cane and a 90L mulch block, plus mulch mat, weed mat pins, concrete pavers and a native planting mix. None of that is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

The rest of the range is in the garden centre, and if you are picking up more bags of mulch than will fit in the car, we run a local delivery service on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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