A low-maintenance garden is not an unloved one. It is a garden designed so that the work you do put in counts for more — tough plants that look after themselves, paths that let you reach the borders without a struggle, and a watering routine that takes minutes rather than an afternoon. Whether you have a small town plot or a longer stretch running down to a brook, the same principles apply: fewer, better choices, made once and repeated.

Begin with the ground beneath your feet

Before you buy a single plant, spend twenty minutes reading your site. Is the soil heavy clay that sits wet through winter, or thin and stony over chalk? Does the bed bake in full sun until four o'clock, or sit in shade cast by a neighbour's hedge? Matching plants to conditions is the single biggest labour-saving decision you will make, because a happy plant needs almost no help.

If your garden borders a brook, treat the damp strip as a gift rather than a problem. Moisture-loving plants rarely need watering, and a planted bank is more stable than a bare one. Fibrous-rooted plants such as sedges, Iris sibirica, meadowsweet and Filipendula knit the soil together, while candelabra primulas and astilbes give you colour in the wettest corner. Leave the bank itself alone where you can — bare, scuffed earth is what erosion feeds on. If the brook is not yours, or the bank is steep, check who owns the land before you dig.

Pick plants that thrive on neglect

Robust does not mean dull. Some of the best wildlife plants in Britain are also the hardest to kill, and they will reward you with years of flowers, seedheads and cover for insects.

• Sunny, well-drained beds: lavender, Nepeta, hardy geraniums such as 'Rozanne' and Geranium macrorrhizum, sedums, salvias and ornamental grasses like Molinia and Deschampsia.
• Shade and dry roots: hellebores, epimedium, hardy ferns, bugle and wood anemone.
• Damp ground and brook edges: Carex, rodgersia, ligularia, Iris sibirica and native wild angelica.
• Free-seeding fillers: foxgloves, oxeye daisy, meadow cranesbill and wild strawberry, which spread themselves and ask nothing in return.

Buy in autumn where you can. Plants put in while the soil is still warm establish roots before winter and need far less mollycoddling the following summer.

Plant with wildlife in mind, then leave it be

Wildlife gardening is often described as extra work. In practice, it is the opposite: it is a decision to stop tidying. Leave seedheads standing through winter for goldfinches and overwintering insects. Let leaf litter lie under shrubs as free mulch and shelter. Pile prunings in a quiet corner instead of carting them to the tip.

A single shallow water feature — even a buried washing-up bowl with a few stones at the edge — will bring in frogs, birds and damselflies, and costs you nothing but a top-up now and then. Skip pesticides entirely. If you leave the aphids, the ladybirds arrive, and the problem solves itself within a fortnight. A wild corner of nettles and long grass behind a shed will support more butterflies than any border you deliberately plant.

Reduce watering to a sensible routine

Hosepipe bans are now a normal part of a British summer, so design for drought rather than hoping for rain. Three habits do most of the work:

• Mulch everything. A 5–7cm layer of bark, leafmould or garden compost in spring locks moisture in and halves how often you need the can.
• Water deeply and rarely. Two thorough soakings a week beat a daily sprinkle, because they push roots downwards. After the first two summers, most established plants can fend for themselves.
• Harvest what falls. A water butt on the downpipe, or a soaker hose on a timer under the mulch, turns watering into a ten-minute job once a week.

Group thirsty plants together in one bed near the tap, and put the drought-tolerant ones furthest away. Grey water from washing-up bowls is fine for borders, though keep it off edible leaves.

Keep your kit and your edges simple

Most garden time disappears into searching for tools and fiddling with edges. Buy fewer, better ones: sharp bypass secateurs, a pair of loppers, a long-handled weeder, a good spade and a trug. Store them in one box by the back door and clean them once a season. Everything else is optional.

Simplify boundaries too. A gently curved edge of mown grass, or a shallow trench cut with a half-moon iron, is far quicker to maintain than timber edging that rots and needs replacing. If you must have a lawn, let it grow longer between cuts and accept a few daisies — a close-cropped, weed-free lawn is the most demanding feature in any garden.

Design easy access for busy days

The best low-maintenance garden is one you can walk into without changing your shoes. Paths of at least a metre wide, in brick, gravel or self-binding stone, let you reach every border with a wheelbarrow. Avoid steps where you can, keep surfaces firm and level, and raise a couple of beds to waist height if bending is a chore.

Then make the garden inviting on a grey Tuesday. A bench in the sunniest corner, a seat by the brook, a path that loops rather than dead-ends — these cost nothing to maintain and are the reason you will keep going outside. Aim for a garden that looks after itself, so that the time you do spend in it is spent sitting down.