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You can create a beautiful garden if you have unlimited time. But of course, no one has unlimited time. Those who tend large gardens do so with smart time management. Here’s how you also can have a beautiful landscape, even with limited time.

• Research your plant and landscape decisions. Take a few minutes to read up on your next garden project. You’ll make better choices that will save you from having to redo the project later.
• Block out time for gardening. Some gardeners like to do a 10-minute weed and deadhead session before work each morning. Others make Saturday mornings their time for puttering in the garden.
• Get organized. Devote a corner of the garage or a shed to gardening supplies, and keep them in good working order. You’ll save hours of trying to find the right tool. In the garden, put all the small tools and supplies you need often into one basket or organizer so they’ll always be handy.
• Look at your garden every day. Take a minute or two each day to walk through your yard. It will give you a jump on small problems before they become big ones.
• Keep a garden journal or notebook. Centralize all those magazine articles, seed packets, and notes to yourself in one location.
• Plant in large groups. As a rule, planting a large group of the same type plant is more efficient, because you spend the same amount of preparation time regardless of the size of the planting. Larger plantings mean fewer sessions of preparation time. You spend the same amount of time getting out tools and supplies and preparing the site.
• Group plants according to their needs. Put all acid-loving plants in the same area so you can acidify the soil more efficiently. Keep all moisture-loving plants together so you can water more efficiently.
• Mulch! Mulching saves water, suppresses weeds, and inhibits many soil borne diseases.
• Avoid exotics. Choose low-maintenance plants that don’t require staking, spraying, excessive feeding, protection, or digging up each fall.
• Choose plants that do well naturally in your area. Yes, you can grow delphiniums in a desert, but they’ll take lots of time, effort, and water. If you’re determined to have a bumper crop of blueberries in alkaline soil, you can spend lots of effort on building raised beds and acidifying the soil regularly- but is it worth it? Appreciate what grows easily in your area. Those plants will practically take care of themselves.
• Experiment with flowering shrubs. Excellent timesavers compared to many perennials and annuals, they require little more than a bit of pruning once a year, if at all. In return, they give you abundant flowers and often, fragrance.