I had a green out in a month-aged 29 gallon I started with a HOB cannister. It has a twin fluorescent hood and some sun exposure. You couldn't see the back of the tank from the front!
I added two bundles of anacharis, a bundle of hornwort and a couple of crypts on a monday! By that friday, it was crystal clear and none of the areas I had scraped with a magnetic scrubber showed any signs of surface algae. I know the crypts are such slow growers that they didn't make a dent in the suspended nutrients, but the anacharis doubled in apparent volume within two weeks and I started pulling it.
7 weeks later with little or no maintenance, it is still crystal clear with a couple of stowaway ramshorn and pond snails. I'm going to keep it going with DIY CO2 and add shrimp.
The tank is set up to supply biology classes in my building with anacharis samples and suspended eukaryotes for observation. I'm not going to put fish in it so it can over-summer (new word?) without maintenance with the shrimp snails and lowlight plants.
The crypts are actually planted in gravel covered soil inside of old teachers' lounge coffee cups.
"Messy" was only an issue when I floated the potting soil to eliminate suspendable particles before potting the crypts.
On another note, I've got a HUGE java fern system in a 30 gallon low light community that's never greened out and only has an occasional expansion/outbreak of beard algae. I periodically pull the older leaves (reaching in by hand) as they seem to be withering.
So in my experience, I think lowlight plants are anything but messy. Not sure about the more demanding planted tanks with higher light and nutrient replenishment. . . .
If you have enough light and nutrients for the plants you try to keep, they shouldn't be messy.
