Garden Design - Low Maintenance Gardens

Do without a lawn if you can to avoid having to mow it. Grass is the most economical ground cover so this will not be a cheap option. Alternatively, reduce the  grass area as much as you can.  A must if there are children around and a good lawn is the perfect foil for other planting.  Consider other surfaces.

Keep the shape of the lawn as simple as possible with sweeping curves and minimal planting of trees / flower beds in the lawn.

Lay a "mowing strip" all around the lawn against beds / buildings etc. This is a strip of bricks or narrow paving at the same level as the grass so that when you mow, the mower gives a good edge without having to strim. Again, not a cheap option as the edge needs to be firmly footed to stop grass and weeds growing between the bricks.

Plant beds with ground-cover shrubs to avoid weeding.

Plant fairly slow-growing plants so you don't need to cut back so often. These can be interplanted with short-lived faster growing biennials and perennials if looks a bit bare to start with (though this is getting away from the low maintenance ideal).

Use bark chips or other mulch appropriately to minimize weeding

Avoid bedding plants and perennials that die back in the winter.

Avoid containers. These will always be more effort than planting into the ground. Because containers need to be densely planted to look good they need an awful lot of watering. Missing two or three days in mid-summer can decimate the contents.

If you plant roses, then use shrub or species types, these are more resistant to disease than others, don't require constant dead-heading and are lower maintenance all round. Avoid "hybrid tea" roses.

Before you plant anything, clear perennial weeds, Dig them out / apply a weed killer. Things will be easier in the long run.

Soil preparation, loads of organic matter to start with, plants will get away twice as fast and you won't need to look after the plants nearly as intensively.

Use the largest ones that you can afford, they dry out more slowly.

Place them away from windy areas if you can, wind dries plants out much more quickly than sunshine.

Fill with drought tolerant plants as far as possible

Avoid conifers, these are particularly susceptible to drying out. If they do dry out, they don't give any warning by wilting, they just look exactly the same but slowly turn brown. By the time they show they're in trouble, it's too late, there's no going back.

Consider installing an automatic watering system.