Clearing away summer growth and cutting back perennials is both satisfying and sad. Summer’s warmth, sun and colour are over, but who doesn’t enjoy that satisfying glow after tidying up? Great. But work in our gardens gives us pleasure in so many other ways.
We enjoy clearing away an unsightly mess and reducing the risk of pests and diseases next year. But we also get satisfaction from providing essential food and shelter for all the wildlife that brings such vibrancy and interest to the place.
The vast majority of creatures sharing my garden are too small for me to see, but this doesn’t make them any less important.
Some tidying up is certainly essential. A rotting nasturtium is only fit for the compost heap and the soft-leaved foliage of perennials such as hemerocallis are for the chop. They are only a source of disease in a bed and spread their decay to neighbours.
Add any nest boxes to the cleaning list to protect next year’s residents from disease. Don gloves and give the boxes a good spring clean. Remove unhatched eggs and nest debris and finish the job by pouring a kettle of boiling water over the interior to kill off pathogens. Then leave it open to dry out.
Many border perennials play a valuable job over winter so should be treated differently. This includes stiffer, non-flopping specimens, like autumn flowering sedums, clumping daisies and grasses. I also leave Anthemis tinctora and some fern stems as they shelter the crowns over winter, and I then tidy up in spring to give the fresh growth free rein.
This also offers welcome cover for so many small mammals, like hedgehogs. Sadly, none have taken up residence in my garden, but I love glimpsing a darting shrew intent on its next insect repast.
Hollow stemmed plants offer invaluable overwintering cover for many invertebrates, including ladybirds and spiders. So leave the likes of umbellifers such as fennel, cow parsley, and angelica.
A non-too-tidy garden is a source of food as well as shelter. Finches dine on the decorative seedheads of alliums, crocosmia, honesty and eryngiums as well as annual nigella.
And blackbirds and thrushes fall upon our berries and hips. My fine fat hawthorn berries have largely gone by now and holly will soon follow. I’ll need to remove any berries I want for Christmas decorations before long.
A wood stack is the perfect haven for amphibians and small mammals and a heap of prunings is just as good. Choose an out of the way spot where you can let a woody pile rot down slowly. A more compact garden will generate much less of this material and you’ll need less space by breaking up any branches with loppers and secateurs.
This kind of pile can be an eyesore and hardly appropriate for a small garden. The solution is to make a special ‘dead hedge’. Define the area to suit the garden and the prunings you have. Drive 2 lines of poles into the ground, with each pole 45-60cm apart, and whatever width you want. You could make a discreet feature of it by weaving pliable stems like willow between the poles.
Some years ago, when my firm was running a demonstration organic garden, we found the dead hedge appealed to many of our visitors who were keen to copy the idea.
And let fallen leaves play their part. Instead of frantically removing leaves from a bed, let them cover and mulch bare ground. Surface worms help to break down leaves which other worms then absorb into the soil, thereby improving its fertility and structure.
Plant of the week
Geranium macrorrhizum. Leaves change colour gradually throughout the autumn creating a palette of reds, yellows and greens. Hardy and adaptable, these are essential plants for every garden.
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