8 Low Maintenance Landscaping Plant Combos That You Can Get Anywhere
By: Tessa
We certainly don’t want to imagine a world without landscaping plants. These beauties can transform an urban home with a basic front and back yard into a woodland cottage with an outdoor oasis. We believe a beautiful landscape doesn’t need to be hard to maintain. So without further ado, enjoy this list of low maintenance landscaping plant combos.
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#1 Hydrangeas and Lavender
One of the best ways to fill up a flower bed is with hydrangeas and lavender. These full, bushy plants add elegant greenery with pops of color. We love how the soft blue and muted purple look together. Lavender blooms in early summer and sometimes again in late fall, and hydrangeas bloom in the spring with flowers present until the frost. This means these two plants have very similar bloom times.
These perennials only require the initial planting to sprout back each year. We suggest pruning your hydrangea bushes in early winter, but pruning a lavender shrub can actually damage it.
#2 Hostas and Azaleas
We love ourselves a bright Azalea bush and oversized hosta leaves make us swoon. Pair the two together, and you’ve got one of the most hard-to-kill, low maintenance landscaping plant combos. Both of these plants love partial shade, making them excellent flower bed additions for the border of a home. Although they can survive a frost, you’ll want to protect Azalea blooms on cold spring nights. Hostas bloom in the late summer, and their flowers look like delicate lilies.
#3 Boxwood and Arborvitae
There’s a reason this classic combo has withstood the test of time. If you want plants that will look just as lovely in the spring as they do in the winter, evergreen is certainly the way to go. Boxwood plants have elegant round leaves, and their trimmings make a pretty addition to a bouquet or Christmas decor. Boxwoods are fairly low maintenance, but you should trim them when they get too dense, as unnecessary growth can negatively affect the plant’s health. If you want to get fancy with it, you can trim them in a round shape.
Arborvitae is a super popular evergreen, and for good reason. They possess the classic, Christmas tree shape, but unlike other varieties, they grow super fast. These plants can grow as tall as 60 feet at three feet per year, so we don’t suggest planting them too close to your house unless you plan on frequently trimming them.
#4 Elephant Ears and Ferns
As far as low maintenance landscaping plant combos go, we usually only suggest perennials. However, elephant ears are honestly way too cool to pass up. If you’re willing to put in the work of planting the bulbs once a year and digging them up once a year, it’s totally worth it. But if you’re lucky enough to live in a warm climate, you may not even need to dig them up in the winter at all. In most climates, they can grow about 5 feet long and 3 feet wide, so they certainly make a statement.
Channeling inspiration from the tropical rain forest, we suggest pairing elephant ears with ferns. Both ferns and elephant ears love moist climates, so they’ll especially thrive in the humid midwest and southeast in the summer. However, with the right sprinkler set up, they can do well in most areas across America.
#5 Sedge and Roses
There’s something about contrasting sedge’s sharp, pointy leaves with the beauty of a rose that just works. It’s one unexpected, yet low maintenance plant combo that we don’t see too often, but we hope to change that. Sedge is just as useful as it is pretty because this plant prevents erosion And if you’ve ever smelled a rose blooming, we don’t think we need to sell you on this shrub.
#6 Moor Grass and Cosmos
Taking notes from the prairie, we love mixing dried grasses with whimsical wildflowers. However, you need to be careful when planting ornamental grasses, as they can be quite invasive. So while we love pampas grass for dried indoor arrangements, we don’t suggest adding it to your landscape. Instead, opt for ornamental grasses that grow in bundles, like moor grass. Like many wildflowers, cosmos can grow in poor soil conditions, so you don’t need super fertile land for these beauties to survive.
#7 Hostas and Miniature Arborvitae
Okay, so we know both hostas and arborvitae have already made an appearance on this list in some form. But we really think it’s worth mentioning how well these two plants look together. However, we especially love pairing miniature arborvitae with hostas. Miniature arborvitae looks great trimmed in a round shape, and we love layering them in this particular form with hostas along a walkway.
#8 Juniper and Rose of Sharon
Juniper and Rose of Sharon make wonderful growing companions. Both plants come in different tones, but we especially love pairing blue varieties of Rose of Sharon with cool-toned juniper. Rose of Sharon shrubs need full sun, but other than that, they are pretty easy to grow and maintain. And you pretty much can’t get more low-maintenance than evergreens like juniper. This evergreen variety is one of our favorites thanks to their fragrant branches, and they grow well next to Rose of Sharon because they also prefer areas with full sun.
If All Else Fails, Go With Potted or Hanging Plants
If you’ve procrastinated a bit and missed the optimal planting season for your annuals or perennials, you can still spruce up your yard with plants. We love hanging and potted plants for this reason, but keep in mind that they do require a more frequent watering schedule than most landscaping plants.
At brick&batten, we specialize in more than just landscaping plants. Contact us for more information on a brick&batten virtual exterior design, and we’ll help you with shutter and front door combos, and everything between.
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