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Now that the landscape is strongly suggesting the occasion
of fall, you know it's only a matter of time before your
garden perennials will decide to pack up and call it a
growing season. However, some perennials tend to pack
haphazardly, casting off dried leaves here and spent seed
pods there, leaving your garden looking more like a compost
pile than a flower bed. Many of us just raise up our arms in
frustration and accept the fact that our gardens will just
be a bare mess for the winter; after all, spring is only
four to five months away, right?
Don't give up on your winter garden just yet; there are
ways to avoid the Post-Modern Compost Style in your
landscape. All you need is a free day and some essential
gardening tools to clean up your perennial beds and keep
them looking manicured throughout the off-season. By knowing
which perennials to cut back, which ones to leave alone, and
which ones that can still add winter interest, you can help
your perennials survive the winter, and perform remarkably
the next year.
Now, let's go over your garden tool checklist for your fall
perennial cleanup. Bypass pruners? Check. Rake? Check.
Garden gloves? Check. Shovel and spade? Check and check.
You're all ready to hack back your perennials now, right?
No! Before you take a pruner to anything, first you need to
know what you've got. Each perennial plant is different;
some should be cut off all the way to the ground, others
should not be cut at all, and yet others should be cut some,
and then cut differently come early spring. Once you know
which is which, you can selectively prune your plants
effectively.
Most perennials are of the herbaceous kind, that is, they
die back to the ground every year. Some well-known
herbaceous perennials are daylilies, hostas, and astilbes.
During your fall cleanup, you want to prune the dead leaves
and stems back to the ground level, and then tuck them into
their beds with a layer of mulch. As a general rule of
thumb, mulch shade perennials more and sun-loving perennials
less, as the sun perennials are more prone to rot. The mulch
layer will also keep the root system from drying out during
the winter.
Another group of perennials are the semi-herbaceous bunch.
These include plants like black-eyed Susans, shasta daisies,
and goldenrod. These perennials shoot up long flowering
stems that die back after blooming, but the crown of basal
leaves at the bottom of the plant are evergreen. To
winterize these plants, cut back the dead and dying
flowering stalks and leave the green leaves. The plants use
these leaves to photosynthesize throughout the winter, and
they also help add some much-needed color to the winter
garden.
The last group of perennials are the evergreen and subshrub
perennials. Some evergreen perennials are candytuft and moss
phlox, and some subshrubs are plants like butterfly bush,
Russian sage, and artemesias. The only pruning you want to
do to these plants in fall is the removal of dead plant
material and leggy growth from evergreen perennials. You do
not need to prune the subshrubs at all. Doing so might end
up being harmful to the plant.
Some other perennials that you might want to consider
leaving alone are plants that provide structural interest or
seeds for birds. Many people leave ornamental grass to
provide interest, and perennials like purple coneflower and
sunflower provide food for birds through the winter. Leaving
these perennials be will be much more rewarding than cutting
them back to the ground.
All right, now you know the different types of perennials
out there, and how to properly care for them during this
transitional season. You can now know the difference between
an herbaceous and semi-herbaceous perennial. You can now use
that knowledge to properly identify your plants, and
correctly prepare them for the winter. You now know when to
mulch more or mulch less, and why. Now, you can clean up
your landscape while still keeping your perennials healthy
for next spring, and make your yard the envy of the
neighbors. Now . . . now you're ready.
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