Low Maintenance Gardening Made EASY!

Create a stunning outdoor space with low maintenance gardening made easy! In this video, we’ll share our top tips and tricks for designing a beautiful and functional garden that’s perfect for Florida’s subtropical climate. From choosing the best low maintenance plants for your Vero Beach garden to clever DIY landscaping ideas on a budget, we’ve got you covered. Whether you’re looking to create a private oasis around your pool or a butterfly garden that attracts these beautiful creatures, we’ll show you how to achieve a gorgeous garden makeover without breaking the bank. With our expert advice on plant care and garden transformation, you’ll be on your way to creating an outdoor living space that’s perfect for relaxing and entertaining. So, if you’re a true gardener looking for inspiration and guidance on tropical landscaping and Florida-friendly landscaping, this video is for you!

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🌿 Landscape Design Services by Construction Landscape Co.

1. Design + Installation (Local Service Area Only)
If you’re located in our Florida service area—including Jupiter, Stuart, Port St. Lucie, Vero Beach, Sebastian, Melbourne, and Viera—we handle everything from start to finish, including your custom landscape design and full professional installation.
📧 Email: ConstructionLandscape640@gmail.com
📞 Call/Text: 772-290-2332
🌐 Website: constructionlandscapeinc.com

2. Design-Only (Available Across Florida)
Get a custom 3D landscape rendering and a detailed CAD plan you can use for installation. These plans clearly outline the plant placement, quantities, sizing, and spacing, as well as care and maintenance instructions—perfect for DIYers or for handing off to your installer.
📧 Email: ConstructionLandscapeDesigns@gmail.com (Please include your phone number if you email us)
📞 Call/Text: 772-290-2332

3. Virtual Consult with Jennifer
Schedule a one-hour video call with Jennifer to walk through your space, ask questions, and get expert advice tailored to your garden or property layout.
📧 Email: ConstructionLandscape640@gmail.com
📞 Call/Text: 772-290-2332

https://youtu.be/3I9Ojh_J_Zg?si=ZaTl2mkwSGNILXOD if you enjoyed this video, you may also love this video of a narrow side yard jungle garden with pathway.

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🛠 Tools & Products We Recommend

✅ Beuta Landscape Edging:
https://beuta.com/?sca_ref=5366334.4F

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🌺 About Our Family Business
With over 25 years of experience in Florida landscaping, I work alongside my husband, our son Bryce—who helps with design consults and our YouTube videos—and our daughter-in-law Marissa, who runs our office. We’re a small, family-owned company passionate about creating sustainable, beautiful resort-style gardens and helping others feel confident in their landscape choices.

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💬 Questions or Comments?
Thanks for watching today’s video! If you found it helpful, feel free to drop a comment—we try to respond and help however we can.

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🎵 Music Credit:
Music: Early Hours
Musician: @iksonmusic

Well, hello gardeners. Welcome back. Today is all about maintenance or lack thereof maintenance. So, we’re in my backyard space. And the reason why I’m doing today’s video is because I had somebody come over yesterday picking something up from marketplace, of course, and they said, “Oh my god, who would have thought this backyard was back here in this typical subdivision, right? You must spend every single weekend in your backyard nipping and clipping and trimming and doing all the things that need to be done to maintain a yard like this.” And I thought, let me share with you guys what’s involved with the maintenance on this kind of planting, this kind of garden, this kind of tropical forest. Some of these tips and tricks can help you kind of create more of a cove field, create more of like a jungle field that is going to give you a lot lot less work. And I’m just going to tell you my techniques and why that is. Grab your cup of coffee or your glass of wine, depending on the time of the day it is for you, and we are going to jump right into this video. Let’s get started with the roof line, the upper area. Now, by creating shade in your garden, whatever you choose to use, whether it’s a canopy tree, a hardwood tree, or what I’ve done here with palm trees, that is going to be the very first thing to do to change the microclimates. And why that’s so important is because the less sunlight on the inside of your garden, the more you’re able to create that thick, dense plant grouping, that thick, dense jungle floor down below that’s going to give you that jungle inspired vibe. I love palm trees. I love fast growing palm trees like coconut palms, like a palms, triangle palms. Those are a few of the palms that I have that are my upper canopy palm trees. Those are the things that are going to allow me to bring in my shorter palms, my more exotic palms. when you’re thinking about hedge trimming and gardening and shaping and clipping and and everything that needs to be done with that, that is a lot less time involved in doing those kind of things versus the continuation of monthly garden service. And what those canopy trees offer you is the allowance to put in a lush, thick network of plant groupings or plant combinations that are going to give you an abundance of color, an abundance of that tropical feel with very, very little work. Like for instance, look what we have here. I love this is the end of my garden right here. A nice bright spot of color with the Sesia. Now Sesia are notorious for fillers. They’re big growers. So why is that so low maintenance in my garden? Is because it is the perfect braided combination of plants. This area I put in a little swath of this and it fills all the gaps. So it really gives you almost like a forest floor of thickness and denseness. And what that does is it eliminates the chance of weeds coming in. Anything else kind of coming through them. It becomes a sea of just one thing in this grouping. And all I have to do is just make sure that one limb here and there is just not going to grow into another one. Like you know, I like that this is an ending point right here before you get into my farfugeiums. So if I had a limb that came over here, I would just simply clip that limb. And you can kind of do do what you like with these guys. You can really give them any kind of haircut. They’re such a simple little plant to work with, but because they’re in a such a nice collection, a nice tight grouping, it really gives you that tropical vibe and covers all of that groundwork. So any leaves or limbs or anything that falls just below this big giant leaf on this, you don’t see. You don’t you don’t have to constantly rake. You don’t have to constantly just kind of make sure everything is manicured and pruned. It really gives you a just nice cover of tropical foliage. And I have a lot of areas in my garden that are just like that because when you have a lot of tree material, you have a lot of fronds, a lot of leaves, you’re going to get dropage. Now, along my walkway and through the front yard, those leaves and debris that fall from birds and whatnot and clippings, those are all visible and all scene. So, I’m either blowing them out, pulling them up, or picking out the the weeds from in between because there’s nothing there to catch that. There’s nothing there to disguise that. So having something like these guys or aglionas or like the burl marks that I have down below, having a collection of plant groupings doesn’t allow for anything else to get in there. It really gives you that dense kind of bit of a blanket. And that’s kind of what my whole garden goes from. It goes from these guys here. The only maintenance that I have is separating the species. So I just have a little break between each plant species. I’ll just take one little clipping off and then make sure that they’re not touching. And that’s all you have to do is just make sure that one is not intruding on the other. I mean, too much because I do like a little bit of of cuddling. You want that kind of mesh. You want that garden floor because in nature, that’s exactly how things grow. You’ll see in those beautiful forests how the ferns cover all of that ground. Now, that prevents new growth from popping up and it prevents weeds and whatnot from taking over and filling up that area because you don’t have any sun exposure that blocks out anything like that. And then these are heavily rooted plants. Things like croins, things like burlarks, cesia, agonymas, their root system is so good that they really knit together underneath and knit together above which does a great job of preventing anything from down below to sprout up. That allows for that tropical feel to that garden. But you can’t have that unless you have the cover that protects those particular plants. And that’s why more of a filtered light or a shade garden is going to be a lot less maintenance. Right over here on this side, I have my centerpiece tree, which is my triple bottle palm. You guys know how I feel about my bottle palms. They’re just so fun. Down below, I have the dwarf Taiwanese exora. These guys bloom 10 months out of the year, give you great color, but are such a slow growing little leafed plant that require very little care because of how slow they grow. I mean, I literally trim them about three times a year. And then I balance them out with these icon croins. And croins in general are going to be on your slower growing maintenance plan. So, if you guys like the look of croins, then you are in for a lowmaintenance landscaping because this painted leaf offers very, very little care. Song of India droenas down below. Again, a perfect lanus plant. You only trim what you don’t want. A couple times a year, I will just nip off. One that gets a little bit too tall. So that way, these connect fully and become a nice little 3-FFT ground cover. I do this because these guys as they get a little bit taller are going to have a little bit of a legggininess to the bottom, and this is going to cover that. This is going to be my skirt grouping. And then of course, look at this leaf color together. It’s just so stunning. The light and the dark combinations are just gorgeous together. So, let’s move on over here to a tad bit higher maintenance. And why? So, anything blooming is going to be on your higher maintenance side. I had softened this little area. So, I have a tree jasmine. This gets great great sun, gets the heat off the deck, so it gets tons and tons and tons of blaring sun and it’s happy. It is blooming like crazy, but it constantly drops old blooms everywhere. So that is one of the higher maintenance plants that I have in my gardens because I have no protection. If I put something over top of this, I’d have this beautiful green foliage but very, very little blooming on that and that would minimize the maintenance. The next thing that I have that gets such great sun is that Madagascar palm right there. And you can see when it’s in full bloom, oh my gosh, is just a stunner. I mean, it is so such a focal point that I’ve kind of made it the centerpiece of my rock garden right here. But because of those blooms, it’s constantly holding brown blooms above and then it causes this area to be a little bit higher maintenance because of all of that droppage, the droppage on the deck and whatnot. Keep that in mind on what trees that you’re going to plant. If you’re going to have a heavy blooming garden, whether it’s a butterfly garden or it’s a cod style garden and you still want to do that mass plant grouping, you can absolutely get a big benefit and big beautiful impact from that kind of gardening, but it’s going to be on the higher end of maintenance. So, if you can do more painted leaves, more variegated leaves, which are usually things that that do require a little bit of protection, do require some shade. Hence why this section of my garden, even though it has way more plants than probably the rest of the yard, it is a lot less care because of that reason, because of all of this ground foliage that we have. I mean, just look at how many different species we have right in this area. This penanga, which is a slow grower palm, this penanga coronada, absolutely stunner multi- trunk little palm tree. I wouldn’t been able to incorporate this palm tree had I not had the triangle and the coconut palms and the ora palms around it because it would have been far too much sun and I’d be constantly helping this tree survive by adding tons of water to it, tons of micronutrients to it to kind of get it to be happy and healthy. Now with the protection and it being the undergrowth to those trees, it is thriving. It is beautiful. It’s doing super super well in its first year in the garden. It’s probably grown probably more than more than they said that it should grow. So, but it is absolutely stunner. And then just down below, look at the dense foliage of all of this agonas. I mean, I just trim them so very little and they do exactly what I want them to do. I would put them everywhere if I could. They are a bit pricey, but they are the perfect jungle floor to a shady environment because they really do a great job of multiplying and densing, becoming a dense plant without being too crazy where you’re constantly having to keep them up. They grow slow enough to make that happen. And then we have some ground orchids right in through here. Look how you just don’t see the floor of the garden and that is kind of the reason for it. I’ve been able to put in some more exotic tropical trees in here because of the shade included in this backyard space. So, that is a key to creating this type of look. The more sun you get, the more care is involved, the more trimming, the more shaping, even the more fertilizing. Because most of the time when you have sun, a lot of the plants and choices and tree choices that you’re going to have to work with are going to be bloomers, which is great for some people. But just know that that is going to be that’s going to create quite a bit more work than this particular space right here. So when it comes to a creating a space very similar to this, get your roof line in first. So get your trees that are going to create that canopy coverage. Then start with your walls. So it could be something like fishtail palms as your walls. It could be something like a palms, kucia hedge, whatever that might be. So you have your wall and you have your roof line in. Now, the only sun that that area is now getting is from the side, which is the perfect condition for plant groupings like this. And you’re not constantly fighting with having to add tons and tons of water to it and tons of fertilizer to it to keep that tree healthy because it’s in an environment that it’s always battling. It’s almost like it’s got the flu. You got to keep the immune system up on those varieties of trees if they’re not in the perfect conditions. If you’re worried about weeds, because I get this question all the time, how do you battle the weeds? I do not. I do not battle any weeds in this part of my garden. I have tons of ground cover that creates a such a knitting effect that doesn’t allow any sunlight. Pretty much gives me that beautiful layer of foliage and it gives you that kind of pop of color without without having to worry about weeds. So, it’s just such an ideal thing to work with. So, whatever you choose for your upper tree canopy, whatever you choose for your roof line is going to allow you to choose quite a bit more. It’s going to open you up to more of a tropical scape for down below. Now, one of the other things that I want to mention as far as maintenance goes in a backyard space. Now, this isn’t for everybody, but I love the use of stone. Whether it’s stone just bordering the edge of a planting bed, I’ll do that commonly in gardens where we have foliage like this where it’s layered and it’s thick and it’s tropical, but then we want to kind of give it a nice clean finish line, like a pristine little border. Then I’ll take and do a twoft curved border of stone edged with like either a natural edging like you see here or we’ll use something like the buta edging like you see here or I’ll use the aluminum alloy edging. Whatever it calls for for that particular spot. That’s kind of what I’ll use because I kind of want a garden where it is like I always say the crazy is in the back, the party is in the back and then have something really controlled to the front. What I love about that kind of feel is it gives you more of a pristine kind of more of that resort-like feel when you have a nice border of stone or can incorporate a lush border because you go from all this heavy crazy wild to very very clean lines that kind of keeps all of that paired back. So, if that’s a look that you like, kind of keep that in mind because when you have a stone area and you don’t have a bunch of plants in that stone bed, it’s a lot easier maintenance than you think because we have a good amount of weed barrier pin down below and then it’s edged along the side. So, this becomes almost like a ground floor. This becomes very compact, very, very dense and I don’t have to worry about it if I get a weed here and there. Very easy to pull because it’s just a top layered weed. It’s not something that’s coming from the ground up and then I don’t have plants in there that are causing a network of roots. So, and that’s what makes it low maintenance. If there are plants in there, it would make it a higher maintenance planting bed. That’s a great way to take a jungle vibe and then polish it a little bit with stone. I love using Mexican beach pebbles as that border. You can use other decorative kind of rock as that border, but whatever that might be that kind of gives you that, you know, it kind of gives you that flare, that little tropical vibe there. And another way to make your garden interesting with little care would be incorporate pots in there. Not baby pots, not little pots, but definitely some bigger pots. So, I have a pot in my garden. I have several pots in the front yard garden. It is a way to keep a plant that you might like that maybe is is a difficult plant. Maybe it’s a plant that likes to run or likes to take off in the garden, but you definitely love the idea of having that front or that look in the garden space and you want to keep it controlled. A pot is a great way to do that. incorporate it right into the garden. Now, this is a tree stump that I had to take out. So, there’s a flat stump underneath there. So, I wanted something with some impact coming from that spot, but I couldn’t plant anything there, hence the pot. So, this was another alternate option because I wanted a dune palm to stand and crown over top of these croins. As these croins really grow into this space, the natural clay pots do a great job of releasing water. They don’t tend to clog nearly as much as the other pots. Do it correctly, of course. We always use cheesecloth at the bottom, some stone next layer, and then cheesecloth again, and then our soil. So, it’s like a lasagna, you guys. Just kind of function it that way. And I think that always had great success with our pots in that type of way. But incorporate them into the garden. God forbid we get one of those freezes once or twice a year. You pull that bad boy out, put it in the garage for the night, and then the rest of the year she’s golden in the ground. So, that is an ideal thing. But if you have those plant stands that have holes in them and you have landscape lighting, put the plant stand over top of the landscape lighting, it’ll shine that whole pot. It is just such a stunner. I’ve done that in different projects where I’ve had that opportunity to do that. All my clients think that’s brilliant and it really does shine. I’ll kind of get Bryce to pop up an example of what that looks like and you can incorporate that all the way through your garden. It just kind of gives you a little bit of gleam and also gives you a little bit of different interest because you know all those plant stands are so different from each other. So, you know, just as kind of like a recap on what we talked about today, you guys. Just because you want a jungle inspired garden does not mean you have to be out in the garden every single weekend or even every single month. I am in my garden about three times a year on average. You do some trimming, you do some light foliage. I would say if you can do like a an 80% count when it comes to your trees. So, your your tall trees, your accent trees, your wall, whatever that is. If it’s more palms, that’s going to give you less work or less care in the garden because those things need to be trimmed more like a like a bianually type of thing versus or shrubs or plants need to be trimmed more often. So, that’s kind of how my garden is structured. I have my roof line of my canopy trees. I have my wall as my kucia and other types of slow growing palm trees. And then I’ve got my tropicals underneath those because they’ve allowed for them to live happily underneath that environment, underneath the roof line of all those big canopy trees. And then I come in with my foliage. Now, it looks like I have tons of foliage in my garden, but I really don’t. I really just have a nice jam-packed collection of groups. And that’s the way I like to do it. You guys know I like to plant in drift. So, I’ll do a a drift of Sanchezia and then it stops and breaks and then a drift of burl marks and then a drift of croins. had that go through the garden and in any of the open areas, any areas that you see in your garden, as long as you have some protection, some good cover, fill that bad boy up with something like bird’s nest fern or crowned orchid or ageneemas, anything that’s kind of your taste, that’s your style. Make that your ground floor because that ground cover, not only suppresses weeds, not only just is it a gorgeous view from the base up, it gives your garden that finishing touch it needs where you don’t see any type of ground. And it makes the garden feel more expansful. Makes it feel more full because you have a carpet as a base. Then you’ve got your accents in the middle. Then you’ve got cool tropical foliage coming out everywhere else. And then you’ve got your structure trees that kind of keep everything nestled in together. And that’s the way to create that jungle vibe, that jungle experience. It doesn’t need to be as vast or as long as my particular space. It might be your sideyard. I’ll put a link down in the description down below of a sideyard jungle inspired walking path that I did. And it’s the same type of feel. It’s it’s maybe like 12 foot wide and very very short in length, but it’s a very narrow sideyard that really created that same kind of feel where we had shade. We had pockets of coverage where we could incorporate some really cool foliage because of what that offered. So, you know, kind of keep that in mind. And when it comes to lowmaintenance, there’s not anything lower maintenance than incorporating some natural material in, you know, adding some boulder here and there, a little bit of a statue, some flag stone, anything like this. Like I love this little combination of ending point here with these boulders on this side of the edge ending this kind of backyard space coming up to these boulders that are covering up a stump over here. I just I like the way that that little inset, that little insert into the garden, a little touch of a boulder here and a boulder there. These boulders that are incorporated into the garden, these are things that are you can pick up with your hands. You can kind of transport from one space to another. I love bringing them. We go to Tennessee often. That’s where my husband loves to go to hunt. We go to Tennessee pretty often. So, I’m always coming back with a truckload of of little handheld boulders to incorporate into my garden and other people’s gardens because I like that look in the garden. There’s no maintenance to it. It adds just another different element. Just like I would change a contrast of a frond to a leaf or to a different type of soft foliage to more dynamic foliage. A boulder does the same kind of look but offers, you know, no care, which so is I kind of kind of a no-brainer, right? But you can also do that with a non-natural material in the garden. Like I love my little mushrooms over here in the garden. I love little statues and whatnot. Little things that kind of just add a little bit of personality, a little interest. Those are things that kind of soften that jungle vibe, that forest vibe, and kind of help you create more of that, you know, that that enjoyable walkable space, that little bit of personality in the garden. The next thing that we did when we took out the grass, creating this rock pathway, if you guys love pathways in your garden, once the stone is down and once it’s done properly, it is no fuss, no mus. This is the easiest thing we’ve done. We don’t have to water the grass. We don’t have to cut the grass. We don’t have to worry about this in my backyard. This walkway has become my backyard swale, my backyard space. And what’s great about it is it’s so easy to maintain and trim from both sides of my pathway area here. I can nip and tuck as I walk safely through my garden and technically bare feet if I wanted to and just nip things as I need to as I walk through. I can do that on my left side and on my right side. And this is where all of my heavy foliage is within just a few feet within just a hand reach. the back side of my garden. You that’s an area where I’ll collect old fronds before my maintenance guy picks them up. This is an easy way to maintain that. Keep it an area to where you can maintain from the backside and from the front side. And then that way that little bit of time in your garden, it’s easy to transport with a little wheelbarrow and and do your trimmings and clippings and kind of keeping it on the lower maintenance end. All right, you guys. So, I know that was a lot of information to probably digest. I’m hoping that you got enough information and and tips through this video that it might help you kind of create something similar into your own space. You guys have always been so kind on the comments on how much you love my outdoor space. So, I thought that let’s share this video today and let you in behind the scenes on the lack of maintenance that’s involved with a space like this. If you enjoyed today’s video, then please click on last week’s video. It was how we created a private backyard in your typical backyard suburban space. Thank you so much. Take care. to see you next weekend.