My Autumn Chores: Finding Balance Between Nature and Order

With its beautiful light, artfully fading flowers, and subtle shifts in color as the leaves turn, autumn is a magical time of the year. It’s a season for slowing down, and appreciating this golden moment, but in my garden at least, it’s also a time where there are, as always, many, many chores (and never enough time to get them done). I want to appreciate the loveliness for as long as possible, yet I also want to ensure that the garden looks as good as it can through the long winter.

As with most things in the garden, climate change is scrambling time-honored routines and forcing us to recalibrate what we do and when we do it. If “putting the garden to bed” was once a routine for late autumn, tidying up borders and placing them under a cozy layer of mulch perhaps, the shifting seasons has made it almost impossible to follow these old habits.

Not that I’d want to follow all these “old ways” to the letter, in any case. Like most gardeners, I’ve come to appreciate leaving beautiful structure in the garden for winter, and allowing stems and debris to remain in order to  provide habitats for over-wintering creatures, too. But how can we find a middle ground, one that satisfies our need for some kind of order, while also respecting natural rhythms of all the lifeforms in our gardens?

Photography by Clare Coulson.

Plant bulbs later.

Warmer winters create a particular conundrum when it comes to getting spring bulbs planted. At home, my borders can still look colorful and abundant until late November and gradually the task of tidying borders and getting bulbs into the ground has crept later and later. But at a certain point, practicality will win out and I will tidy up the borders, get bulbs into the ground and then layer with a rich compost. The rest of my bulbs will go into pots, topped with a fine chicken wire to prevent squirrels or rodents eating them over winter.

Leave perennials, grasses, and seedheads alone.

Wherever possible I leave perennials, grasses, and seedheads standing in the garden over winter, and this late season interest is a key factor in how I choose grasses, too. Arching Stipa gigantea, fluffy Pennisetum, the beautiful feather-like foliage of Miscanthus— all of these ornamental grasses take on a special presence in winter, especially when they are contrasted with other interesting seedheads such as Baptisia australis or Phlomis russeliana.

Light becomes a key element of the garden in winter, backlighting all of these plants or throwing dramatic shadows through the cold months. In these moments, being outside with a cup of tea is an intense pleasure.

Cut lawn, trim hedges, and edge paths.

In my garden I prefer to keep the grass short and neat in winter and to clean up the edges wherever possible. Once the leaves have dropped, all the hedges will be cut, removing all the new growth from the year and giving them some sharp definition through the winter when their forms become key elements of the garden views. This year I’m going to invest in a shredder that can transform all this waste into lovely mulch to add to the garden next year.

Gather leaves, but don’t throw them out.

Gathering fallen leaves can feel like an arduous task in November, but I prefer to collect or they will suppress grass over winter. Leaves are also a precious resource, so I rake them into piles and bag them up, allowing them to rot down for around six months. Next year I will add this nutritious leaf mould to borders. Where leaves have fallen onto borders I used to leave the litter, thinking it would rot down, but this kind of detritus can also provide shelter for creatures you may not want setting up home next to your prized bulbs or perennials. Instead, I’ll also add these leaves to leaf litter bags or to the garden shredder.

See also:

• 6 Nature-Based Garden Tasks for Fall
• Habitat Piles: Turning Garden Debris Into Shelter and Sculpture
• Ask the Expert: Doug Tallamy Explains Why (and How to) Leave the Leaves