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If you lack all enthusiasm for life and care little about the value of your home, you can create a landscaping theme that only the moon might envy without lifting a thumb. Let’s simplify the step-by-step instructions for no-scaping: Disconnect your garden hose immediately. Put the hose and any garden implements you may own in the back of a pickup truck and drive the truck to the landfill. Leave the truck and walk home.

Arboles Carbonizados

This scheme sounds romantic in Spanish–until you discover that the phrase means “charred trees”. Instructions: Plant two trees in the center of your yard. Never water them. Let the wind romantically stir the dirt. When one tree dies, cut it down to the stump. Repeat as necessary.

Styromania

Let’s face it. You have the attention span of a gnat and the imagination of a dachshund. Take Styrofoam bowls, fill them with cement, and glue them to the tops of color-coordinated brick to create a row of artificial toadstools. Be still my beating heart!

Fountains of Roam

At first, you might find this unkempt yard of weeds staid and ghastly. But look closer. The handcrafted jug to the left of this inspired yard treatment accepts loose coins just like the Trevi Fountain. Mind bending!

Meteor Métier

Life on the rocks? Here’s one landscaping effort that celebrates the spontaneous rain of matter from the starry skies. We’ve all seen much worse. It’s heartening in what seems like an arbitrary universe that we can control the way even the driest yard can appeal to the eye. Writers at Drought Plants have suggestions for planting an appealing yard when there’s a dearth of water. “Drought-tolerant landscape,” they say, “does not mean ugly.”

Yard Positive

The bloggers at Savvy Cafe have plenty of suggestions that can spare your landscape scheme from appearing like so much stubble on the face of woe. But you’ll need to recall your hose and implements from the landfill.