Yard care is the worst — everyone agrees. While you might find your stress reduced by planting flowers in your garden or harvesting crops from your fruit trees, you probably don’t care a bit for raking leaves, pulling weeds, pruning shrubs, mulching and the like. At the lowest level of your yard work chore list is likely lawn care, which is grueling and time-intensive, requiring a few hours every week to ensure your lawn is healthy and attractive. 

Fortunately, you don’t have to be a slave to your yard — or, at least your lawn. Here are a few ways to reduce your lawn care responsibilities, so you can enjoy your lawn more. 

Keep Your Lawn as Healthy as Possible 

When you are at your healthiest, you aren’t spending as much money or time at the doctor’s office trying to identify illnesses or issues.  You should apply this logic to your lawn care. If you can get your lawn to peak health, you won’t need to devote as many resources to combating pests, diseases, patchiness and other common lawn problems. Make sure you schedule regular lawn maintenance, companies like TruGreen Massachusetts will know when you need to tend to different lawn issues. In spring your lawn might benefit from a lime application and in summer you might need to look at insect control. With the right contractor you can have a beautiful lawn.

When your lawn has the nutrients it needs, it is effective at fighting off threats on its own, meaning you can relax. To this end, I have always contracted lawn care services near me to ensure my lawn is as healthy as possible.  

Reduce Your Lawn’s Size 

A chihuahua is less work than an Irish wolfhound. Chihuahuas don’t eat as much food or require as much energy to control as larger dogs; their small size makes caring for them much easier.  

The same holds true for lawns. If you have less grass on your property, you’ll spend less time mowing it, you’ll use less water and fertilizer, and you’ll generally avoid devoting an excessive amount of resources to maintaining it. However, this does mean you’ll need to fill your yard with something else, like hardscape or gardens, to ensure the landscaping remains attractive and functional.  

Install Lawn Borders 

Bordering your lawn with mulched beds or hardscaping is a simple way to increase the appeal of your yard while reducing its maintenance requirements. In-ground borders make it easier to mow the edges of your lawn without using an additional tool, like an edge trimmer. Plus, borders prevent the lawn from spreading to new areas of your yard, so you can limit its size and your use of resources to care for it. There are near-unlimited ideas for lawn borders online.  

Consider Your Lawn’s Shape 

Lawns that meander, asymmetric lawns and lawns with irregular shape are much more difficult to care for. This specifically true when it comes to mowing, and because mowing is such a common and dreaded lawn care chore, you should seek to limit the work required to mow as much as possible. Most landscape designers advise matching the shape of your lawn to the shape and style of your home, but you should also note that different lawn shapes are easier to care for. For example, squares and rectangles are the simplest to mow because they allow you to move in straight, regular lines.  

Plant the Right Kind of Lawn 

You shouldn’t expect to grow tall, healthy palm trees in northern Minnesota. Similarly, you shouldn’t mistakenly believe that you can grow a cool-season grass like Kentucky bluegrass or tall fescue in warm climates like Texas and Arizona.  

Contrary to popular belief, there are different types of grass, and you need to be certain that the type of grass in your lawn suits your climate, your soil and your usage. The wrong type of grass will require more resources to keep alive and thriving. You can contact a lawn professional to identify your grass type and prescribe you a more suitable variety if necessary. 

Get Better Lawn Care Tools  

If you need to zest a lemon, you probably shouldn’t reach for a spoon. The best way to accomplish tasks efficiently is to use the proper tools, and this lesson is especially true in lawn care.

If your mower is constantly breaking down, if you are using safety scissors to trim the edges, if you are aerating using old football cleats — if you are doing anything except using the best quality tools you can afford, you are making more work for yourself and potentially endangering your lawn.  

Outsource the Whole Thing 

You can outsource any element of lawn care to professionals to reduce your responsibilities. While I maintain control over watering and mowing, I do use a lawn care service to manage the less frequent tasks, like aerating, fertilizing and seeding. However, if you want to eliminate your lawn care load entirely, you should consider finding a full-service lawn care team within your budget.  

Gardening can reduce your stress, and installing hardscaping can feel rewarding. However, the interminable responsibility of lawn care is anything but fun. Using the tips above, you can cut back on the time and money you devote to your lawn, to so you can spend more time and money enjoying it.