The (gentle) winter edit

Tidying the garden with the gentlest touch, clearing away the mush and the breakages, to reveal the early bloomers and colourful stems.

February has arrived, dear gardening chums! Meteorologically speaking, it’s late winter! Hoorah! Just the 300 days in February to go and it’ll be Spring. Won’t that be nice?

Although it’s the month I start sowing hardy veggies (usually around Valnetine’s), as far as I am concerned, February is mercurial and deeply untrustworthy! I always greet February with a great deal of suspicion... It’s either “60 days of Winter” or “Hot in the city!” with Londoners donning shorts and Ts, basking in Soho square… Who knows what it’ll bring?!

By February, every garden will have been battered by a series of autumn and winter storms, bringing torrential rain and floods, gales, ice and snow. Probably all in the same day. As I write, Storm Éowyn is just leaving these shores, after barreling through with gusts of over 100mph to the North and widespread 50-60mph across the entire country.

Around the gardens in late January

Turning our attention to the here and now, looking out at a fairly calm garden scene, it’s fair to say some plants absolutely shine in winter. They die-off majestically and gracefully, retaining their structure and holding their frosty stems and seedheads high and proud… others… well they just collapse into an ugly, stinky mush, or break apart and carelessly scatter themselves across the entire garden. Boo!

Here, in this garden, it’s time to have just a little, oh so gentle, tidy-up. My garden is in Southern England and we enjoy a relatively mild winter, albeit a soggy one, heavily influenced by the Gulf Stream. For my readers across the pond, it’s a USDA zone 8b Maritime equivalent. We rarely see temperatures fall below -5℃ (23 ℉) and snow is even rarer. Certainly not the deep freeze of continental USA, Canada, or mainland Europe.

Under this Goldilocks climate, we have a few botanical gems to look forward to this month! Hellebores with their gently nodding flowers in deepest plum or speckled cream. Snowdrops winning the race to be the first flower bulb to open its pearly white bloom. The blazing stands of Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire’. The incredibly fragrant winter-flowering shrubby honeysuckle aka Lonicera × purpusii 'Winter Beauty’.

Hundreds, if not thousands of spring-flowering bulbs are nosing their way through the earth, pushing up green shoots and heralding the new season. I’ve just seen a ‘February Gold’ daffodil outside the gates, poised to open!

It’s exciting stuff!

However, to see them and enjoy them to their full, I need to clear away the barricade of ‘brown’ obscuring my view. Although I almost feel like I need to justify tidying my own garden, I’ll just point out that as a wildlife photographer and environmentalist, my approach is very gentle, always keeping an eye out for overwintering wildlife needing essential cover.

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Let us begin, snip snip!

First to go is the Hakonechloa macra, the Japanese Forest Grass. It’s held aloft its bronzed blades all winter, serenely wafting in the breeze, but now, as the new growth pushes through, the old foliage breaks away and blows around the garden.

Before I start chopping, I have a nosey through the leaves to see if there are any insects and invertebrates sheltering amongst the blades. I found one ladybird that was delicately removed to the safety of an evergreen fern. I use either sheers or secateurs to cut these grasses right down to stubble. It’s easier now, before the new season growth is visible and makes cutting back more fiddly.

To look their best and keep them healthy, deciduous grasses need an annual spring prune. If you leave them to their own devices, their crowns will eventually clog up with dead growth. Evergreen grasses like Stipa tenuissima or Carex do not require pruning. They can be combed through, just to remove the dead growth.

Another grass that has decided to sheer itself off at the crown is Mollinia ‘Transparent’. The wreckage of straw-coloured stems just shouts ‘Look at me! I’m a real mess!’ These are mostly pulled out as they’re already broken-off, with the remaining stubble receiving a quick buzz with the secateurs or sheers. Grasses still looking great and left standing are Calamagrostis × acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' and the various Miscanthus sinensis all around the garden.

Now for the mush! Double gloves for these! Yuk!

You’re unlikely to find any critters hiding under the mush apart from slugs and snails. First-up… Alchemilla mollis or Lady’s Mantle. The leaves are soft and brown and the stems collapsed. Underneath the mucky gloop, tiny jade-green scalloped leaves will be unfurling, so give them room to breathe and sunlight!

The same goes for Hardy Geraniums. Most of the old growth can be simply pulled out with a sharp tug, but some stems are fibrous and need cutting. Persicarias and Bistorts all suffer the same fate, with rotting leaves pulled out, leaving their knobbly crowns exposed to the elements. Crocosmia has lasted really well, but is now prostrate and smothering its neighbours. The leaves come free with ease, self-pruned from their corms weeks ago.

Along the journey down the Flower Garden path, the semi-evergreen Geums are tidied up, pulling out the old brown leaves around the outside, keeping a fresh green centre ready to power through spring. You may see ladybirds hunkered down in the middle of these, so go gently.

Gaura, is simply shortened by about half. I don’t cut these back hard until I see good strong growth in early April. The same goes for woody Penstemons and shrubby Salvias. They can be shortened, but save the hard spring prune for later.

Although I pruned my Wisterias in the summer, shortening that green whippy growth, it’s time to shorten it further and expose the knobbly flowering spurs. Any good strong growth (travelling where I want it to) is mostly tied in, to extend the main framework. Everything else is curtailed.

The generally accepted rule is to prune side branches back to just 3-5 buds and thinning out any overcrowded spurs. The main reason for pruning wisteria is to reveal those heavenly racemes of flowers and prevent them from being hidden by lush growth. Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) flowers on bare wood anyway.

The herbaceous peonies have been reduced to bare stems with just a few crispy leaves clinging on. These are cut down to the ground. Be careful here. You may see the bright red noses of this season’s growth coming through, so be cautious and avoid damaging these.

Lastly, it’s the hellebores - Helleborus × hybridus. The flower stems are rising quickly now and I want to see those flowers. So, it’s time to lose last year’s evergreen growth. These leaves can carry over hellebore leaf spot which will infect new growth, so it’s always a good idea just to prune them out and reveal those glorious flowers!

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That is as much as I am prepared to do for now. It’s far from a wholesale clearance, more of a considered winter edit. Crucially, the paths are cleared of mush and I’ll be able to see those early bloomers and colourful stems!

All the prunings are taken away to the compost bays and laid on top, intact. Just so any bugs I have missed can crawl off and enjoy the comparative warmth of the compost heap. Generally speaking, I rarely see any insects clinging to stems and dead vegetation that has already broken away or turned to mush. But do go gently, just in case.

Almost everything else in the borders is still strong and upright and this is all left for a few more weeks. Leaving plants standing over winter works for us and wildlife. We have something to look at (especially if it’s frosty) and the myriad of tiny creatures that share your garden with you have somewhere to escape the elements… but they may have a tougher time escaping hungry birds! Either way, you’re making room for nature and all those beneficial insects can get to work early, predating on mollusc eggs, baby slugs, early aphids, etc.

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Coming up…

Something that does need my immediate attention are the Roses! They will be the subject for my next post - “Rose pruning kept simple” More specifically shrub roses. It’s a very simple yet satisfying job, but somehow made to feel overly complicated. I’ll cut right through all that nonsense!