Creating a low-maintenance artificial garden

If you're not a lover of gardening but still want to reap the rewards, either a partial or fully artificial garden could be the way to go while barely lifting a finger. Below, we revealed our best ways to create an effortless artificial garden!

Planning an artificial garden

The best place to start is to consider what you're garden will be used for. Is it a quiet space for you to hide away and relax or a playground for little ones?

Planning is the key to creating an impressive outdoor space. Before you begin digging and planting, grab a pen and some paper, sketch out the shape of your garden and plan away.

The best place to start is to consider what you're garden will be used for. Is it a quiet space for you to hide away and relax or a playground for little ones? With the former, you'll likely want to create a private space away from your neighbours where you can sit in peace. The latter means you'll want some open space somewhere without too many plants and obstacles in the way.

Once that's decided, you should have an idea of whether you want to build upon your existing garden design or start over with something new. Remember to make a list of any existing plants that you want to keep and draw your plan roughly to scale to help you plan how many new plants you'll need.

Start mapping out your new low-maintenance garden including any flower beds, paths, seating areas, sheds and other features. You might miss things out in your first draft, so make a few different plans, mull them over in your head, talk to other house members and return to your planning later with any revisions.

Planning your artificial garden will give you a rough idea of how much it will cost before you get stuck in. Most projects tend to cost more than you first imagine, so give yourself some wiggle room to cover any unforeseen expenses.

The benefits of using artificial plants in your garden

Using faux plants in your garden comes with a plethora of benefits:

• Saves money on your water bill

• Plants are always healthy

• Flowers are always in bloom

• Easy to care for, especially as you grow older

• Allows those with disabilities to enjoy a beautiful outdoor space

• Suitable for shade covered gardens where real plants may not survive

• Ideal if you travel often

• Saves a heap of time

While we'd all love to own a flourishing, natural garden, the pay off is that you'll forever be caring for it, instead of enjoying it. While some people love to care for their garden, it might not be for you and that's okay.

Unlike real greenery, faux outdoor plants are suitable for anyone and live happily in most conditions no matter how, cold and shady they may be.

Creating a low-maintenance garden with artificial plants

Now that your planning is out of the way with and you've decided how you'd like your garden to look, you can get stuck in!

Below we've listed some ideas and recommendations for your outdoor space.

Patios & outdoor living

Patios and potted flowers are like bread and butter. Without flowers, your patio can feel empty so try dotting around a few patio tubs to splash around some lively colour. Our best-selling erica and geranium patio tub works brilliantly for this with three colours to choose from.

You can add a more homely vibe and transform your patio into a tropical paradise with the help of some palm trees. This tip works especially well if you use them to frame a seating area or a hot tub.

Our areca palm is the most common choice for gardens due to its UV stability, which means it won't turn a nasty shade of blue when the sun comes out. Either plant it up in a stylish pot or sit it directly in the ground and top with some decorative gravel.

Any faded fences or crumbling walls can be instantly hidden away by the botanical beauty of a green wall. These easy-going foliage mats can quickly hide a boring background and turn a dull grey garden into an uplifting plant utopia.

Try simple foliage like our forest foliage living wall, or go for something with a little more oomph with a wildflower green wall.

Entrances & curb appeal

Your front door is where people will form a sense of who you are and your home. An untidy, neglected front garden might reflect poorly on the rest of your home, but with the help of some faux florals, you'll add beautiful curb appeal without having to care for it.

A hanging basket or two is the easiest way to immediately add beauty but a pair of topiary trees either side can really amp up the elegance of your home and create a grand entrance!

Popular picks include our trailing wild berry and geranium hanging basket which features cascading ivy to gently sway in the breeze, or you can make your own faux hanging basket. On the topiary side, bay trees are the top choice, with natural wood stems and UV stable greenery. Alternatively, the captivating twists and turns of spiral topiary make any garden look expertly maintained. Our boxwood spiral offers a classic topiary look while our premium cedar spiral has the extra touch of glamour.

Flower beds & borders

We love a flower-filled border but the daily dead-heading, watering and replacing when they lose their colour is a tiring (and costly!) cycle. Instead, you can do it once and reap all the reward with a few faux flower bushes and shrubs.

A border bursting with colour can be achieved by mixing and matching different coloured hydrangeas and geranium bushes. Finish it off with a few outdoor grass plants to add height and interest to your border, and voila!

If your garden style is more minimal, a border of elegant palm trees or topiary might be up your street.

Pathways

Sure, a path can be plain and grey, or it could be something more inviting with the help of a few plant buddies.

If you want to liven up an existing path, you can simply line it either side with some flowering bushes of different colours by poking their stems directly into the ground.

If adding a path is part of your new garden design, the easiest and most affordable way would be to use stepping stones. You should be able to find some at your local garden centre and you want to choose stones that are flat and around 15 inches wide and 2 inches tall. You can find different types, some with more natural textures, some of unique shapes and others with a more contemporary style.

Once you've found your favourite type of stepping stone, lay it down in position on your grass and use a knife to trace around the edge and cut into your grass. Then take a spade or shovel and dig out your grass and some of the soil.

Lay your stepping stone down and check the depth. You want it to be low enough so that you can run a lawn mower over it (unless you're going for a grass-free garden) but tall enough that it's easy to walk over. Repeat for all of your stepping stones until your path is complete, leaving about 5 inches in between each stone.

You could go one step further, and fill in the spaces between each stepping stone with a ground-cover plant like creeping thyme, periwinkle and creeping phlox, all of which have beautiful flowers that will grow back every year, adding gorgeous colour to your path.

If stepping stones aren't the vibe you're going for, you could try a gravel or mulch path, but that does mean you'll have to dig out your full pathway which, depending on the length of your path, would need lots more work than the stepping stones. If this is the route you want to take, make sure to lay down some landscaping fabric underneath (not plastic, which will collect water) to fight off any sprouting weeds.

Finally, finish off your path by lining it with some solar-powered lights to help you find your way in the dark.

Lawn

Your lawn - arguably the most high maintenance part of your garden may be the standard choice for a garden, yet allergies and weekly lawn mowing might have you thinking of switching it up for something a little less demanding.

One of the latest garden trends is to swap your grass for a no-mow lawn! Something sustainable with no need to scarify, feed or weed kill, as well as being supportive of bees and good for drainage. Sounds good right? Here are some options to choose from:

Moss

Yes, really! You might have spent your whole gardening life, up until now, trying to keep moss out of your garden. But it's not the villain you might believe it to be.

In fact, moss gardens are incredibly low maintenance, happily remaining green in times of little rainfall, where your neighbours turf will likely be a faded shade of brown...

Creeping thyme

This beautiful ground cover blooms with vibrant purple flowers in the summer and possesses aromatic leaves which help to ward off mosquitoes. What's more, just like moss, it doesn't need watering, doesn't require mowing and it's great for bees.

The payoff for its stunning purple hues is that creeping thyme isn't great at withstanding high foot traffic, so those stepping stones we talked about earlier would come in handy here!

Clover

Lucky, affordable and incredibly eco-friendly! Clover is an excellent low maintenance lawn option and is loved by pollinators.

Just like the others, clover lawns demand far less water than grass and doesn't need mowing, growing up to just eight inches a year. That said, some owners prefer to trim theirs once a year in the summer to deadhead old flowers.

It also removes excess nitrogen in from your soil which can damage some plants, while providing a home for butterflies and other wildlife.

Small gardens & balconies

Having no garden, or very little, shouldn't mean that you're left out. Artificial wall gardens, or vertical gardens, are a brilliant way to maximise your space and enjoy a splash of colour without needing tons of room.

There's a couple of ways that you can go about this. The first is an artificial green wall...

Green wall

Green walls, or living walls, have become a popular choice for landscapers, designed to bring space-saving greenery to urban spaces, while providing year-round colour. While you can opt for a natural living wall, they can be tricky to maintain, with recirculating water systems that need setting up to store, pump and distribute water throughout your wall.

Instead, you can go for the one and done approach and opt for a faux living wall, which is available in a variety of different styles from tropical foliage to wildflower walls. Read our full guide on making an artificial living wall or watch our video below.

Potted plants

Using some colourful patio tubs and small flower pots will bring some beautiful, vibrant colour to your space without the need for a flower bed.

Add plenty of variation including blooms of different shades and sizes, and use pots of different heights to create a more wild feeling to your space. You can add in extra style by choosing colourful flower pots, or stick to a more classic style with elegant terracotta pots.

Sit them by a doorway, on a balcony or, try mounting a window box underneath your window sill for instant impact and colour you can see from the inside out.

Blending real and faux plants together

Owning an artificial garden doesn't mean it must strictly be artificial-only! In fact, mixing real and fake plants together can help your garden to look even more realistic.

You can keep plants which are naturally low maintenance like grasses, leave in a few bee-friendly blooms and fill in the gaps with faux to minimise any maintenance.

This way, the natural plants help your artificial ones look more real, and your faux plants save you time and lots of hard work. By blending real and faux you get the best of both worlds!

Artificial garden maintenance tips

The biggest reason for going faux is the low maintenance lifestyle that they bring. That said, there are a couple of things you can do to keep them happy and extend their lifespan.

It's worth mentioning that an outdoor artificial plants' lifespan will vary depending on various factors including how much direct sunlight they receive, whether you live near the coast, humidity, altitude, weather...the list goes on!

To keep your artificial plants in good shape, it's best to shelter them in extreme weather like storms and excessive wind. In a heatwave, consider wrapping up your plants to protect them from UV rays or apply a UV spray for some extra protection - just like sun cream! 🌞

For more tips, read our guide to protecting outdoor artificial plants.

Think seasonally

One of the benefits of faux plants is that they're in bloom all year round, but if you're particular about making them really convincing, you'll want to consider swapping them out with the seasons.

In spring, hydrangeas and geraniums are you friend, along with lavender, sunflowers, and tulips. And once autumn arrives and the weather turns cold, swap out your summer flowers for pansies and foliage arrangements.