I have come to loathe the term "low maintenance". It is essentially meaningless. I am starting to wonder if when a client requests a "low maintenance" design, what they're really saying is that they don't want to do any work themselves, including taking the trouble to find a decent gardener or asking questions.It is imperative for both the client and the designer to discuss exactly what types of gardening activities may occur before doing any design work. Be honest! REALLY! For example, when I got my hair cut last week, I told the stylist that I wash and comb my hair, nothing more. I would not promise to use any appliances or products, and she gave me a cut that works well for my specific needs.You can see from the above photo (taken on my patio earlier this month) that thanks to my personal distaste for weeding, I have a number of (un-planned) plants just growing together, willy-nilly, doing their thing. I am okay with that, so this is the design solution that my personal garden employs. I'll let nearly anything grow as long as it is healthy and doesn't produce anything painful (thorns, burrs, stingers). This works for me because I live in an apartment and I know that if/when I move, the whole thing will be ripped up - there's not much to be gained by fretting over weeds. Given a different situation, my personal garden might look quite different or it might not.I also grow several roses and a few shrubs - some in containers, some not. I grow dozens of rare bulbs, more than dozens of perennials, and a few orchids, but I don't do much "work". Every year I reliably cut Roses, Freesias, and Sweet Peas for indoor bouquets. I know that rose flowers develop at the very end of a branch and that each cut to remove a flower is, in fact, a pruning cut (and where to take that cut). I also know that my Sweet Peas will bloom nearly forever as long as I keep cutting the flowers off - it is just terrible having an apartment full of sweet pea flowers, just awful...There are countless ways to design a garden so that it doesn't feel like a ton of unwanted work, and so that taking care of it is at least somewhat enjoyable. Getting it to that point is as good a reason as any to work with a design professional and/or do a bit of research for your own garden design solutions....but please don't call cutting flowers "maintenance", that just takes out all the fun.