A few years ago, I read a book about letting go of things you don’t use or love. The idea stuck with me. Over time, we collect clothes, furniture, and all kinds of stuff that takes up space without adding much to our lives.
I think yards work the same way.
A plant gets added here, a garden bed gets extended there, and a small shrub grows into a giant hedge. Years later, you’re maintaining a landscape you never really chose. Every plant needs something from you: pruning, weeding, watering, raking, or cleaning up what falls around it.
Minimalist landscaping doesn’t mean getting rid of everything. It means deciding what you actually use and enjoy, then making the rest simpler.
Maybe you have a big lawn because your kids used to play on it, but they’ve grown up and moved away. You could keep a smaller area of grass and turn the rest into a simple bed or another space you’ll use. Maybe a garden bed is full of struggling plants you don’t even like.
You don’t have to keep replacing them just because the bed is there. And if a hedge has become too large for its space, you can decide whether to maintain it, reduce it where appropriate, or remove it.
Some of our quickest and most straightforward jobs are at simple properties: mow and edge the lawn, weed a few beds, trim a few shrubs, rake, blow, and go. Compare that with a yard full of different plants, large hedges, and beds in every corner. Both can be beautiful, but they require different amounts of work.
Around Seattle, it’s easy for a yard to become crowded. Plants grow, leaves fall, weeds move in, and one season of missed maintenance can turn into a larger cleanup. Keeping fewer plants doesn’t eliminate maintenance, but it gives you fewer things to keep up with.
Bark can make a garden bed easier to manage, though weeds can still grow through it or on top of it. A smaller lawn means less to mow, but the area that replaces it needs a plan too.
You don’t have to change the whole property at once. Walk through it and ask yourself: Which parts do I use? Which plants do I want to keep? What am I paying to maintain even though I don’t enjoy it? Start with one area this fall or winter, then see how the yard feels before taking on the next.
You can do some of this work yourself over a few weekends. Or you can hire a landscaper for the heavy removal and spend your free time on something else. Either way, you’re choosing how much of your time and money you want the yard to take.
That’s the point of minimalist landscaping. Keep what matters. Let go of what doesn’t. Make the yard fit the life you have now, not the life someone had when everything was planted.
Field note: Less landscaping doesn’t always mean no maintenance. It means fewer things to maintain—and more room to enjoy the parts of your yard you love.