Brush up your BORDERS
As once-dazzling blooms start to fade, sharpen the secateurs for that essential autumn tidy-up
BEDS and borders have been cutting a dash for months but there comes a time when they start to spoil the appearance of our gardens. In mid-autumn, dazzling perennials turn into a tangle of dying stems while shrubs go leggy and overgrown. And beneath this dense canopy, weeds and seedlings flourish unchecked.
Colder weather will make things worse, but gardeners can improve the scene by giving these features an overhaul.
Apart from immediately brushing up their looks, tackling beds and borders now will keep them looking neat all winter. It also means you’ll have less to do in spring, freeing up time for other gardening jobs.
Start your big tidy-up by cutting back perennials that have finished flowering. Many plants benefit from being chopped to ground level as their spent stems look unsightly and can damage the crown of plants when pounded by the wind. Among those to tackle are astrantia, crocosmia, fennel and Crambe cordifolia.
But don’t be in a rush to chop back everything. Some plants have seed heads that stand up well to the weather, providing sculptural interest and food for hungry birds. Eryngium, hylotelephium and rudbeckia are best left until late winter, as are a host of deciduous ornamental grasses, among them calamagrostis and pennisetum.
DECIDUOUS shrubs give structure to displays but plants can become overgrown without regular pruning. After they drop their leaves, remove any dead or wispy shoots, and then trim back wayward branches, cut out crossing shoots and remove a few older stems. Always prune just above an outwardfacing bud.
Evergreen shrubs don’t need as much pruning but are best left until mid to late spring in any case, as snipping back branches in autumn could result in the plant producing soft, sappy new shoots that are vulnerable to frost damage. Pruning in April or May ensures that fresh growth ripens before the colder weather arrives again.
Once you’ve cleared a bit of space, it’s easy to get into beds and borders to carry out a spot of weeding. At the same time, edit the seedlings of perennials, shrubs and trees that are growing where they are not wanted.
You can either hoick them out withIt’s out a care, or dig them up carefully, plant in pots and set them elsewhere when well-rooted.
Over time, many perennials will form large clumps that can engulf other plants, outgrow their allotted space or become reluctant to flower. easy to restore their vigour or control spread by dividing: lift from the ground with a fork, split the rootball into several portions with a bread knife and replant a few pieces. A word of warning: not all perennials can be divided. Those with multiple stems that arise from a single crown or that produce long tap roots are non-starters. This includes plants such as aconitum, gypsophila, lamprocapnos and lupin, along with ornamental thistles, such as cirsium, echinops and eryngium.
If you have gaps in planting schemes fill them with some new specimens.
Spring- and summer-flowering plants are essential, but don’t forget to enhance autumn interest with Japanese anemones, grasses and lateflowering daisies.
Add some spring-flowering bulbs to provide a pop of colour early in the year. Finish off by mulching the surface with a 3in layer of composted bark, garden compost or leaf mould. Apart from giving beds and borders a uniform appearance, mulches prevent weeds from germinating and protect roots from frost.
Just take care not to cover lowgrowing plants, and you should leave a gap around the stems of woody specimens.