The Autumn - Putting your Garden to Bed
Everything is starting to look tired. In a wet autumn the plants are splattered with mud and drooping disconsolately towards the ground. In a hot, dry autumn they are going brown and looking tatty. We can't win. Everything is starting to look like the plant version of a particularly good student party.
There are differing schools of thought on how and when you should tidy up. Some advocate leaving the foliage where it is to provide beneficial insects with cover over winter and that's a good point but it doesn't always work in practice. Magazines often have pictures of frost covered seed heads sparkling in the winter sun, unfortunately mine seem to just go rotten and soggy. If you live in a colder part of the country you might get the sparkly effect but on the Island, with the wind and the wet, it doesn't seem to work.
I garden on heavy clay and I know that if I don't get the garden tidied in Autumn then I don't stand a chance until April, unless I fancy slipping about and poaching the ground with the wheelbarrow.
So the routine usually starts with the shrubs and herbaceous perennials. I tackle it methodically, starting at one end of the bed and checking plants as I go. The first consideration is 'does this plant stay?' If not, then now is the time to move things around or consign them to the compost heap. There's no point in keeping an under-performer or an unhealthy plant that annoys you every time you look at it. I check the shrubs for any pruning that needs to be done, but I'm careful not to cut back any spring flowering ones or there goes the display for next year! I work my way through the bed cutting back the foliage and weeding until I end up with a 'hedgehog' appearance to the bed perforated with shrubs. It's at this time of year that you really appreciate good planning of a 'backbone' of shrubs. Then, if I have time, I top-dress (mulch) the bed with a layer of something tasty for the plants. If I have enough compost from my own heap then I use that, but I've also used the council compost which is very good. You could also use a mulch of bark which lasts longer and looks nice but does not feed the plants.
I like to have a wildlife friendly garden so I've got around the problem of over-wintering any bugs by allocating an out of the way area as a bug home. I use some of the stems I've cut off to make mini-stacks under the hedges and trees where they provide a discreet residence for my little helpers.
Most of the material I cut away can go for composting, some goes to the bug stacks but you can also burn it. Bonfires are not something you want to have smouldering away everyday and annoying your neighbours but woody matter can provide a good wood ash dressing for the garden. But choose your day and time carefully.
Raking up leaves is the traditional picture of an English autumn and they too can be used as a mulch around the shrub beds. If you want to compost them you should bear in mind that they take longer to decompose than other materials and a lot of people compost them separately either in chicken wire cages or stuffed into black bags.
So there we are, the beds are tidied, the leaves are raked and I'm retreating to the armchair with next year's seed catalogues.
By.
'Er Outdoors
Vine photo by Tim Brayford
