Garden - reducing the work

I started doing Pilates last year and I am amazed at the difference it has made to my back (I have arthritis in my lower back and shoulders). I have spent several hours this past week bending over beds and never once suffered pain. As I love working in my garden this means a lot to me.

I also invested in a lightweight battery lawnmower which is very easy to use

Mine is mostly lawn which I pay to have treated 4 times a year with weed killer and lawn feed. If you have a nice lawn you can get away with a lot of other things. The lawn is the first thing people notice about my garden and I get a lot of comments about how nice it looks.
I have one border running down the side of it. No shrubs as you’re having to forever prune them. I just have plants like bleeding hearts and fuchsias that come up very year, and just require once a year prune and tidy up.
The main maintenance job in my garden is the hedges, which up until last year I cut myself twice a year, but now I pay someone to do them for me. The front garden I turned over into car standing and had Resin bound surface which the water goes through but no weeds ! Expensive, but worth every penny.

Our house is about 20 years old and the garden isn't huge.
When we moved in there was lumpy chippings with dead shrubs around the edges, oh and some concrete thing in the middle.
So we took up chippings and put down turf. After years of struggling with lawn, we gave it up two years ago, and had artificial grass laid by professionals. We went for the medium quality, and it is marvellous.
A couple of borders but soil is poor as must be builders rubble underneath somewhere. We use a lot of containers and hanging baskets which can be as easy as you choose.
OH has built high troughs for people that can't bend down easily and these can be used for veg as well as flowers.

This is my garden not particularly big but the bottom part is left for wildlife and a few months ago I seeded the front bit to be a bit of a lawn,not been touched yet as I think the seed takes awhile to root.I have a pond (wildlife not fish)and grey slate patio but I’m thinking of getting rid of some of the pots and also the slate needs re-grouting and cleaning up but I have a handyman who will do that....

Shropshirelass, I think wildflower meadows, cut just once a year, are lovely. Hedges, though, left untrimmed, soon become a row of trees!

pat9, unfortunately, I've got nowhere with persuading them to reduce it. I could get the council to assess it, but that would cost me £500! If my back gets worse, I may have to get a gardener in to do it - it's so unfair!

Rewilding sounds lovely in a large garden as long as paths through it are cut regularly and native plants encouraged/introduced.
I tried that one year but being a town garden it didn’t look right. I still have bulbs and anemones coming through the grass in the spring as a reminder of that phase.

I have a couple of acres, mostly grass. I have someone in to cut the paddock and most of the hedges but I am thinking of letting it grow wild and back to nature for the wildlife, looking into this more at the moment. Otherwise I am trying to make it easier and less time consuming. I agree that pots, although nice they are quite a lot of work.

Some really interesting replies to an interesting topic for me
so thanks to Esspee.
I'm with Destin on this one and regularly do yoga which in
turn helps me stay active , however since last year's heat wave
I've been looking to change my garden mainly to cut down on the watering as we had a hosepipe ban for a good few weeks and I began to struggle with the watering can! Its an exciting challenge, climate change and old age but gardening for me is my pleasure and keeps the old addage of 'use it or loose it'
alive and well.

mrsba I love it!
We (a group of us in our town) are presently trying to get more people to do this kind of thing.
How did your mum find the couple?
There is a scheme running in Edinburgh and I am sure in other towns and cities too. It was in response to the lack of allotments and a long waiting list while others had little interest in gardening or lack of time and energy.
www.edinburghgardenpartners.org.uk/getinvolved

A young-ish couple took over my mums large garden and used it like an allotment. She didn't charge them but they always supplied her with fruit, veg and a few flowers, it looked lovely and she could sit and have a chat with them (and they let us know if she wasn't up and about) Everyone was happy.

How about replacing some of the grass lawn with a chamomile lawn, or thyme, or mint? Better for the environment than slabs, low maintenance, and depending on what you plant may give some colour and scent when you walk on it. It could be done piecemeal too, just reducing the lawn a bit each year.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Thank you everyone, so many ideas.
I like grass, it sets off the flowers beautifully and as OH considers this his job, and we have a lightweight Flymo, that is not an issue right now. The beds have been well nourished with organic material since 1989. There are so many bulbs which pop up at random times during the year starting with the snowdrops and ending with the nerines. The 6ft high fencing in the back garden is clothed in clematis, jasmine, honeysuckle and roses.
This is a corner site so the back garden is triangular. Quite unusual.
We won’t be moving as we have future proofed the house and have a walk in shower room downstairs together with the kitchen, living room and the dining room is now our guest bedroom. If we can’t make the stairs we shall simply live downstairs.
We have a driveway for 2/3 cars so no need for additional parking as we now have one car.
I used to have a rose bed bordering the front but turned it into a wildflower meadow about 10 years ago. It has got out of control (though it looks lovely during the growing season) with some patches of rampant grass. I have thought of introducing yellow rattle but have no idea how long it would be before I saw any effect.
I am just rambling now. I shall read your suggestions again and again before making any major changes. Thank you so much for all the suggestions.

Lawn with shrubs and trees is hardly any work at all, I have a gardener to cut the lawn every other week in Summer.
The only "gardening" I do, are the pots and window boxes.

The idea of slabs and concrete goes against the grain with me - better to turn and area over to wilderness for wild life than slab it over.

Have a patio to sit on, but anywhere else you could reduce the mowing by simply letting the grass grow - or cut it down and add wild flower seeds or wild flower turf.

I dream of two things: a robot lawn mower and paving the entire front garden, but I can't afford either.

I might just manage the robot lawn mower this year, if there is a good cheap offer.

We have cut our hedges down quite a bit, and I want a little more off them so we can cut them without having to stand on a ladder.

Apart from that, I tell everyone I meet that it is good for the environment, especially insect life to let the weeds grow.

I'm with Muse, but my area is small because I downsized a decade ago.If you can find someone young and strong to come in for an hour a week at £15, it's well worth it. If you have a local college with an appropriate dept, contact them, or just word of mouth, as you want someone you can trust. You can do the choosing, potting etc (the fun stuff), they mow the lawn and weed awkward bits. I have pots I water daily, and I throw out or prune back the contents once a year

If your soil is suitable then rhododendrons and camellias don’t require a lot of work. Just deadheading.
My problem is the leaves and acorns from four oak trees, only one of which is mine. I really don’t see a low maintenance way round that. The leaves are bad enough but the acorns are very very heavy and on my only paved area act like ball bearings. I’m always terrified the delivery people will slip on them and hurt themselves. Very best of luck with you quest - it would be lovely to see a photograph of what you end up with!

This might not be the answer for you but it certainly helped me overcome this problem because in my late 60’s I had the same issues .....sore back and achy hips when I started spring gardening.

So I started attending seniors yoga sessions ....an hour of only slow stretching twice a week, and I’ve kept it up now for several years. It has minimized so many of my aches and pains in all parts of my body and gardening can still be an enjoyable pastime in my life without so many of those miserable aches and pains.

I looked in the local area before we had hard standing installed for our cars instead of a front garden (narrow road with only a few places to park). I realised I had room for 2 largish raised beds as well as some pots - still room for 3 cars. Our house isn’t huge and the garden was small - it just took some planning. However I have to live longer than OH because he’s itching to dig up my cottage garden at the back and install paving or, even worse, fake grass. Take your time planning and look what others have done for ideas.

DillytheGardener I found her through friends as she already had a clientele but over the years we have found people from business cards in local shops and even a friend of our car mechanic who did a great, and affordable job halving the height of a hedge.
When DH was alive, he was a bit sensitive about asking another man to come and do what he wished he could do and I find this attitude prevails among several older folk but if I had someone to "help me" that was OK.
Facebook local residents forum is full of recommendations or otherwise for everything under the sun.

Froglady

My mum had her back garden paved with just a few gaps where she had shrubs planted. She put in lots of plants in lots around the garden . This arrangement was perfect for her and worked very well. Very little weeding, just a small amount of pruning and then watering the plants and that was allege had to do to maintain her garden and she loved it.

That was supposed to read lots of plants in pots.

My mum had her back garden paved with just a few gaps where she had shrubs planted. She put in lots of plants in lots around the garden . This arrangement was perfect for her and worked very well. Very little weeding, just a small amount of pruning and then watering the plants and that was allege had to do to maintain her garden and she loved it.