If I walked into a room and asked everybody to raise their hand if they enjoyed backyard maintenance on weekends, we all know how many hands would be up.

No one LIKES doing the work to keep the yard looking nice, but its preferable to walking out into the yard and seeing a giant mess of overgrown plants, untrimmed grass and dirty tables. So how can you have your cake and eat it too?

Take a couple of cues from these low maintenance backyard designs. Your yard might be bigger or smaller than some of these designs but the basic principles are the same. Click on any of the images to see a bigger version.

Basic Principle #1 – Shrink your lawn space

The lawn is the biggest time sink in your yard, mowing and trimming (even if you’re like me and do a rough as guts job) still takes way too much time. The easiest way to reduce maintenance time is to reduce the area of your lawn, or eliminate it entirely!

If you have kids or pets, you may still need space for play time. These designs are great inspiration for how to use lawn area without making it a heavy burden on your weekend time.

This small yard uses about a third of the old lawn space as a deck, still leaving plenty of room for play.

This small yard uses about a third of the old lawn space as a deck, still leaving plenty of room for play.

 

Only a small section of the yard is lawn, with almost three quarters of the design using low maintenance areas.

Only a small section of the yard is lawn, with almost three quarters of the design using low maintenance areas.

 

This Great design keeps the lawn in the back, so the the kids can play while guests enjoy refreshments.

This Great design keeps the lawn in the back, so the the kids can play while guests enjoy refreshments.

Basic Principle #2 – Build in entertaining areas

Just because you’re going for a low maintenance backyard design, doesn’t mean you have to skimp on the fun factor. If you’re determined to shrink the lawn anyway, why not replace it with a small fire pit or a seating area?

Emilinating the lawn Entirely and replacing it with varying levels of decks adds life to a relatively small space

Emilinating the lawn Entirely and replacing it with varying levels of decks adds life to a relatively small space

 

This fire pit set-up opts for using gravel and stone pavers, the trellis helps add shade and break up the grey tones of the stone.

This fire pit set-up opts for using gravel and stone pavers, the trellis helps add shade and break up the grey tones of the stone.

 

A great entertaining area for a few guests, plenty of shade and close to the pool for summer and nice and warm next to the fire in winter.

A great entertaining area for a few guests, plenty of shade and close to the pool for summer and nice and warm next to the fire in winter.

 

Basic Principle #3 – Keep maintenance intensive products to a minimum

You may have noticed that some of these designs replace large areas of lawn with large areas of timber decking. While this is certainly low maintenance compared to a lawn, the timber itself will take its own sort of maintenance to keep it looking nice. If they had used Knotwood like these designs, you can be sure they would be doing even less maintenance!

 

 

There are so many other factors to making your backyard into a low maintenance oasis. Planting the right types of plants, keeping the lighting intimate to hide all the stuff you don’t want to fix and making the most of your space without making it cluttered.

And don’t think I forgot about design number 10.

When you bring all these elements together you can have a backyard that looks great all year round, without all the backbreaking work that goes with it.