Flowers
Good
Night, Sweet Perennial
by Carrie Paulk
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.
About the Author
Carrie Paulk is the author of "Good Night, Sweet Perennial,"which is part of the Tip of the Week program with Turf Tamer, Inc. Shehas written many informative landscaping articles. To learn moreabout landscaping tips and tricks, you can find the rest of her articles at http://www.turftamerinc.com/tip.shtm . She can be reached at carrie(at)turftamerinc.com.
