What Are Some Ideas for a Low-Maintenance Garden in Cape Town?

A low-maintenance garden isn't a garden with nothing in it. It's one where the plants suit the ground, the soil stays covered, the lawn is the size you actually use and the wind doesn't undo your work every summer. Get those right in Cape Town and the weekly jobs shrink to a quick tidy.

1. Plant for the soil you have

This is the idea that saves the most work, and it's where Cape Town gardens differ most. Along the coast north of the city, much of the ground is sand blown in from the sea as dunes, and on the newer dunes it's limy and alkaline. The wild cover of that sand, the coastal dune bush called strandveld, is evergreen, hard-leaved and succulent shrubland, with herbs and grasses in the gaps.

Inland, the Tygerberg Hills around Durbanville are renosterveld country, and renosterveld grows on richer clay soils from shale. Fynbos plants such as proteas, leucadendrons, pincushions and restios are hardy and water-wise once established, but they want sandy, well-drained, slightly acidic soil, and their roots rot in waterlogged clay. So a protea that struggles in a clay garden isn't a gardening failure. It's the wrong plant for the ground.

2. Cover bare soil with mulch

Bare soil dries out and grows weeds. A layer of mulch around beds, trees and shrubs holds water in the soil and helps keep weeds down, especially around new plantings. Leaves, wood chips and pine needles all work. On sandy coastal soil, every bit of water you keep counts.

3. Keep the lawn to the size you'll use

Every bit of lawn is something to mow, edge and water. If part of yours is never walked on, it can become a mulched bed instead. And for the lawn you keep, the grass matters. Kikuyu is tough under heavy use and loves full sun, but it needs regular mowing and will creep into your beds. LM Berea copes with shade, grows slowly and needs less mowing and feeding.

Top Trimmers lays both as roll-on lawn, so if you're renewing a lawn anyway, it's worth choosing the one that fits how much work you want to do.

4. Water smarter, within the City's rules

Cape Town hasn't had water restrictions since 1 November 2020, but the City's permanent Water By-law rules still apply. Garden watering is allowed only before 9am or after 6pm, hosepipes need a trigger nozzle, automated sprinklers must be adjustable so they don't waste water, and borehole water should be used sparingly.

New fynbos needs watering about twice a week at first, then weekly once it's established. An irrigation system on a timer takes the job off your hands, and it's easy to set to the City's hours. Top Trimmers has an irrigation expert on hand who does all our irrigation systems.

5. Shelter the garden from the wind

The south-easter blows through summer, and gardens near the sea take salt on top of the wind. A horticulturist who wrote a book on coastal gardening in South Africa says the best built windbreaks are see-through ones, such as a trellis, a picket fence or breeze blocks, because they break the force of the wind. A high solid wall creates turbulence that damages the plants behind it. Near the sea, a windbreak also protects the garden from salt damage.

6. Feed less, and clear the invaders

Fynbos needs little feeding: only if it needs it, and then with an organic fertiliser. LM Berea lawn needs little feeding too, so there's no need for a feeding programme on either.

And if Port Jackson or rooikrans has seeded into the garden, take it out early. Both are listed as Category 1b invasive species under national biodiversity law, which means they must be controlled and, wherever possible, removed. They only get bigger.

The ideas at a glance