Maintaining a beautiful garden can be challenging and require a lot of maintenance. From deadheading flowers, to cleaning up leaves, weeding, pruning, and watering, gardens require a healthy amount of attention to thrive. Fortunately, there are some amazing plants that will bring life to your garden without all of the extra maintenance and fuss, allowing you to enjoy your yard and have time for everything else. If you’re looking for some of the best easy to grow plants for your landscape, we’ve listed some of our favorites. Depending on where you live, many of these plants can work for you, however it is best to verify the USDA plant hardiness zone map to make sure these plants will thrive in your area.
Iceberg Rose
Happy in full sun, Iceberg roses require much less maintenance than the English rose. They can be used as colorful hedges and are a low maintenance rose that are great for beginners. The beauty of Iceberg roses is that they bloom constantly, providing pops of color and elegance in any landscape. To keep them healthy and thriving, it’s best to use pruning shears to remove any dead flowers, helping to encourage new growth and blooms. Â
Bougainvillea
Drought tolerant, with blooms early to late fall, bougainvillea is beautiful along a white wall or in garden pots where is can spill over or be trained to grow along a trellis or wall. With so many colors available including white, peach, yellow, purple, red, soft pink, vibrant pink, bougainvillea is the perfect low maintenance plant for your landscape. It can grow from 1 ft. to up to 20 ft. with support from a trellis. When planted in an area that receives warm sun and at least six hours of sunshine, it will grow quickly.
Japanese Boxwood
The Japanese Boxwood, known botanically as Buxus microphylla japonica is a hardy evergreen shrub that is an excellent choice for low to medium formal hedges along walls or walkways. It has beautiful, bright green foliage that looks great against buildings when used as a foundation plant. It is also a great choice when pruned as a topiary or geometric shaped plant, because it grows very slow, which makes it easy to maintain.Â
Ficus Nitida – Indian Laurel Columns
Low-maintenance and loves full sun, Indian Laurel Columns known botanically Ficus nitida are a fast growing evergreen and can add some great privacy and height along walls. Native to Asia and Hawaii, Ficus nitida is an evergreen tropical tree ideal for growing in the Southwestern United States, because of its wide spreading canopy that provides amazing shade. Its lush green appearance adds beauty to any environment year round and provides excellent privacy when planted closely, helping to block out unwanted views.Â
​​Crape Myrtle
Crape Myrtle has blooms in several colors including white, pink, red, and purple. A very small ornamental pretty tree that is drought tolerant and craves the heat, it blooms in late spring and early summer and will decorate your landscape with shades of red, white, purple, and pink.Â
Its leaves turn golden, bright yellow, orange, and red in the fall, providing year round interest and color. This small-to-medium-sized deciduous tree looks good even after the fall foliage has fallen, revealing a handsome outline and smooth, spotted gray to light brown bark, that may shed to reveal a pinkish, inner bark. The cold-hardy Crape Myrtle prefers full sun, though it handles partial shade as well. A longtime favorite plant for use in many landscape styles, Crape Myrtle grows at a slow to moderate growth rate up to 15-feet high, spreading up to 8 to 12 feet.Â
Japanese Blueberry Tree
The Japanese Blueberry Tree is an exotic, upright growing, evergreen tree popular in many landscapes. Native to Japan, this widely used hedging and topiary tree provides year-round color and interest. Part of its elegant beauty comes from the lush evergreen foliage. Bronze-colored leaves appear in the spring, which mature to a dark green color. As the old growth falls, an attractive brilliant reddish-orange color shows itself in the dying leaves. This new growth contrasts beautifully with old growth.
Japanese Blueberry Trees require very little pruning to keep shape. They are heat tolerant and cold hardy, so you can expect eye-catching beauty all year long. Flowers bloom in the summer, with tiny, scented flower clusters attracting a variety of pollinators, butterflies, and birds.
​​Fruitless Olive Tree
The Fruitless Olive Tree known botanically as Olea europaea ‘Wilsonii’ or ‘Swan Hill’, are very similar to the Manzanillo trees and Mission Olive trees, but they do not bear fruit.Â
Drought tolerant and medium-sized, the Fruitless Olive Tree is perfectly suited for a Mediterranean garden style. You’ll want to make this Fruitless Olive a focal point in your landscape with landscape lighting, to compliment its multi-trunk structure and gray/green and silver foliage.
Little Ollie
Little Ollie also known as Olea Europaea Little Ollie is a dwarf Olive variety with lush evergreen silvery green foliage, a multi-branch growth pattern, and dense structure making it a perfect choice for a wide variety of landscape styles and applications, especially drought tolerant landscapes. As a fruitless, evergreen olive variety, the Little Ollie is low-maintenance and easy to care for, while providing a clean and tidy look throughout the year.Â
King Palm Tree
The King Palm Tree is native to Australia and adds elegant tropical appeal to any landscape. Single specimens are typically used as a focal point in the landscape or planted in a clumping of three, adding appeal near entryways. Multi trunk varieties are perfect next to pools and in courtyard planters.Â
Arbutus Marina
Arbutus Marina also known as Strawberry Tree, because of its fruit that looks like strawberries, is an amazing tree for your patio or garden. An evergreen hybrid and a medium sized tree with rosy pink fall flowers, Arbutus Marina is perfect for a variety of landscape designs. Having a twisted, glossy reddish trunk, pretty fruit, and perky flowers, the Strawberry Tree is perfect next to pools, and compliments patio gardens perfectly.
Wax Leaf Privet
Wax Leaf Privet is an evergreen shrub that likes full sun, is cold hardy, and becomes drought-tolerant once established. It adapts well to most landscape styles, with lush, dense green foliage all year long, and requiring only low to moderate water use and thriving in full sun or partial shade environments, it is an easy to care for, fast-growing, small to medium shrub that blooms beautifully in the spring. Originating from northern China, Korea, and Japan, this lush and compact shrub can be pruned into topiary forms, bringing a formal look to gardens.
