Is a large garden ever ‘low maintenance’?

[Moreveganice]

We are moving house and hoping to buy a house with a much bigger garden. I am a keen gardener but not always able to do big hobs due to health issues/ working full time etc. the garden is currently beautiful and has around half left as natural woodland and meadow/ orchard. The rest is herbaceous perennials and shrubs with lawn in between. There are some veg beds which I would be using.
realistically how hard would it be to keep this sort of garden ( almost an acre) under control. ( DH is will be in charge of lawn moving and hedge trimming…

This is what I’m planning with ours over time. There will be trees in front of the house, an orchard on the big slope at the back, and am only cultivating the areas immediately around the house as ‘gardens’ as such. So far most of what I’m doing is tree planting, and a lot of climbers and ramblers on our large amount of stone walls.

Or a basket/trug with a pruning saw, secateurs, knife, string, trowel, weeding tool which goes with you everywhere

Another tip is to scatter ornamental pots around the place which you can dump weeds in, so that when you're just wandering round the garden you can grab that weed you've spotted and drop it in the nearby pot, when there'd be no way you'd walk to the other end of the plot to the compost heap.

You can lose a lot of grass cuttings on borders - fewer trips to compost heap. Ditto habitat piles from prunings.

One of the joys of a big garden is being able to have big plants - Clematis montana, Rambling Rector, Vitis coignetiae climbing into mature trees. It's indescribably the joy from looking up for above at cascades of colour.

Pots are really high maintenance.

Have you got children op? Because if you haven't yet but are planning to, the garden will suddenly drop to the very bottom of your to do list for a number of years (I speak from experience here having over optimistically bought a house with a huge garden and thinking I could do it all myself. We now have a gardener for the basics and the rest of it is what I call a nature reserve)

Gunnera is a great plant for damp spots in large gardens.

It’s unfortunately invasive and has now been added to the list of plants with legal restrictions - it can no longer be legally sold, and you must not allow it to spread into the wild.

Good grief, you're right! I didn't know that. There's a massive clump of it growing in our local park and it's spectacular.

Im very similar to you, love gardening but can’t do strenuous stuff or heavy lifting.

My views on gardening have changed radically after reading The Garden Jungle (or gardening to save the planet) by Dave Goulson.

Now I only garden and actively manage certain area that are within my abilities and that are important to me. (Beds close to house, sunny areas etc)

The rest can be left to nature (with an occasional bit of help), and nature does a better job of protecting wildlife than we ever can.

I now participate in No Mow May, and then mow once a month thereafter. By doing this I discovered wild British orchids on my lawn. I don’t try and eradicate weeds any more. At the moment I have dandelions on my lawn, which provide early food for the bees which are just emerging.

Another example. Come autumn, I now leave my the plants in my beds instead of cutting them back as usually recommended. The brown stems make places for insects to last the winter, and dead foliage provides the new growth protection in early spring. And I keep in mind that you can’t have the birds and bees and butterflies with out the other creepie crawlies in the garden.

So I truly believe it’s completely down to your mindset. It will only be as much work as you want to make it.

If you think you have unavoidable hard work like cutting down hedges, check the received wisdom. We used to have a gardener (but I don’t need one now) who said after July for hedges (because of nesting birds). I checked and now do the hedges in Feb, March. - before nesting birds, but less foliage so much easier.

Thanks for book recommendation, I have just ordered it. His other books look interesting too.
like you I am finding my garden increasingly difficult to manage. It is o.4 acre, and we are surrounded by arable fields. We get all the weeds from the field edges coming over and under the drystone walls, plus there is horsetail! Impossible to eradicate. I'm in my 70s now, and less and less is getting done, we have no family to help. Trying to think of ways to make it more manageable, especially the grass - would like to get rid of it, but would the horsetail take over?! With arthritis it really is becoming a painful chore 😟.

I think I have a low maintenance garden.
The reality is that I enjoy doing things so I’m always out there pottering around, weeding, tying up, cutting back, dead heading etc.
This means it doesn’t take me long to “do” the garden at the weekend, quick mow and edge - so it’s not a full mornings work every single Saturday - but this is because I’m completely on top of things.

I’ve also bought the Dave Goulson book. Very excited!