Reading Time: 3 Minutes
The Best Plants For Rental Properties For a Low Maintenance Garden
If your investment home has a section, you need to know what the best plants for rental properties are.
For a low-maintenance garden (and much happier tenants), check out this list of the best plants you can get for your rental home!
Best Plants For Rental Properties in New Zealand
Landlords are usually responsible for maintaining and pruning trees, shrubs and hedges. This is why it is so important to plan with the future in mind if you are landscaping from scratch.
For the best effect, make sure you choose simplicity over style. You need plants that will keep their foliage all year round and don’t spread out too much.
Below we have a list of some of the best shrubs, trees and hedges for your rental property.
Low Maintenance Shrubs and Hedges For Rental Properties
- Flax - less leaf litter, native, green all year round
- Ground Cover - Native Ground cover plants like Pratia angulata. Ground cover plants add interest, and can act as a natural weed cover. To add some seasonal interest, pick one that has perennial flowers like Wahlenbergia gracili (For a full list of native ground cover suggestions, check out this article.)
- Lomandra - Lomandra is a low-maintenance, Australian-bred shrub that will fill in spaces nicely and stay green all year round
- Corokia - This New Zealand native shrub is fast-growing, resilient, easy to manage, and clip as it gets taller to use as a small hedge.
Low Maintenance Trees For Rental Properties
- Palm Trees - Like flax, palms are relatively low maintenance and will grow beautifully if they are properly cared for. Proper palm maintenance will ensure your property has a beautiful sub-tropical feel all year round
- Frangipani - Frangipani trees are easy to grow and add interest, depth and fragrance to your landscaping
- No matter what trees you decide on, make sure you plan for growth. Choosing trees that grow too tall or too wide may result in having to redesign your rental property garden a few years down the track
Anything that is low maintenance, resilient and evergreen will be the best plants for rental properties in New Zealand.
Easy Landscaping Ideas For Landlords
As well as planting low-maintenance gardens, we have some easy landscaping ideas to keep your property beautiful.
Investing a bit of time into the section will result in:
- Better staging for finding high-quality tenants
- Higher property value
- Happier tenants
Some easy ways to improve the landscape on your rental property include:
- Cleaning up all the edges of your lawn. Overgrown paths are one of the first things a potential tenant will see when viewing the property
- Installing pavers for things like the garden and the washing line to avoid damaging the grass. You could also consider replacing all grass with landscaping stones and pavers to add interest and avoid lawn maintenance
- Putting weed mats and bark in gardens to minimize weeding time (note: this can change the soil composition so it needs to be a long-term decision)
Although it will increase upfront costs, investing money into low-maintenance rental property landscaping will increase the value of your property and attract the best tenants possible.
