It’s the big sleep
There’s some very good reasons why you shouldn’t put the whole garden to bed says Val
ONE OF life’s little luxuries is an early morning cuppa in bed from where I can see the autumn border whilst I’m sipping tea. It’s now full of late-season grasses and tall perennials that produce statuesque seed heads. As I gaze out, wrens swing in out of the border like trapeze artists, catching small insects in the nooks and crannies of the plants. Occasionally they will dive down to the ground, drink from the guttering on the greenhouses, or poke about in the mite-rich lichens on the walls. There may be a pair or more of these jaunty little birds, who are in my garden because they can find food.
The whole area is left intact over winter and then cut down in late January or mid February, so my circus performers are well provided for. However, if I was to put the entire garden to bed now these wrens might not survive a harsh winter.
Insects and tiny creatures tuck themselves up for winter and in 2004 I began to write a book called The Winter Garden. I was about to move house so I spent November cutting seed heads off so that I could write descriptions from firsthand experience. My old garden in Hook Norton was dry and well-drained and it relied on silver-leaved plants. I grew several phlomis, including the shrubby P. fruticosa, P. italica and P. longifolia. They all produced whorls of flower followed by intricate seed heads with lots of cavities.
Laying a collection on a wooden tray I began typing and hadn’t been going very long when a small spider appeared out of one, so I took it back outside. A hectic hour followed as I scurried back and forth with tiny creatures brought into life by my warm study. The same thing happened with crocosmia and aster heads – all sorts of wriggly things emerging.
Plants have to be stiff-stemmed to stand up to wintry weather and most of these woody plants perform in late-summer or autumn. I leave taller asters, aconitums, eupatorium, tall yellow daisies, grasses, veronicastrums, heleniums and sanguisorbas to fade into winter. They often catch a glittering frost, but even if they don’t they move and sway in a winter palette of khaki, brown, grey and black. It’s so much better than bare earth, for me and the wrens.
“These wrens might not survive”