Winter Garden Cut Back

Slowly but surely making room for spring

Galanthus ‘Viridapice’ among the old Penstemon foliage in the Cottage Garden.

“Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.”

—Christopher Lloyd

Rebalancing

I have watched the swell of ecological gardening advice in the past few years with interest and curiosity as the wider gardening community has begun to learn from research about the hibernation of insects in hollow stems, the importance of leaf coverage under trees, and looser-styles of garden maintenance.

And this has been good!

For too long gardeners have thought themselves the only part of the ecosystem, and so this has been a needed balance.

But I do think that well meaning gardeners are now falling off the other side of the horse, so to speak, by not realizing that there are indeed great ecological reasons to cut things down in the garden. Human activities can be a healthy part of habitats, just as disturbance by other animals. But hopefully, we gardeners can learn to work with a bit more intention.

To clip or not to clip

I saw this suggestion from Wild Ones of Western PA this month:

Don’t spring into garden clean up. Wait until temperatures are above 50F! This is typically mid-May in Western Pennsylvania. Let those pollinators enjoy their winter rest in the habitat your winter garden provides… aka stems and leaves.

Double Snowdrops emerge this winter in a bed in the Cottage Garden that has not been cleared of leaf debris.

Choices

There are a few problems that become apparent if you were to garden according to the above suggestion, which does not make room for the winter and spring layers of planting in gardens. It may work for a wild area. It may work for a very late summer garden, but even some late season plants will be putting up a foot of growth by May. It seems that we need to make a bit more room for nuance.

You can have:

Sticks and leaves OR moss

Scattered debris OR bare ground

Close-mowed lawn OR long grass year round

Which of these choices is the right one? If we want to cultivate complexity of habitats to increase our biodiversity (more on that later), then the answer is all of the above.

Naked native plants

There are native plants that depend on some disturbance, whether from wind or animals, for clearing away debris so that they can get to the light each spring. They often grow on slopes, as they do here in our garden. But they also benefit from some light clean-up:

• Native Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) do not grow at all under leaf debris, but smother and disappear

• Our hundreds of Trillium grandiflorum would not be able to get as much sun if I didn’t remove the aster stalks in their garden bed.

• Same with the Erythroniums americanum

Trillium, Bluets and Erythroniums are native plants that all benefit from some clearing away of debris

I like this reasoned approach shared by Dr. Jared Barnes on his Instagram account, Plant_Props:

“I like to use bulbs in naturalistic plantings, but I also like to leave up last year's growth as long as I can to provide habitat and winter interest.

At some point we have to reckon with the bulb foliage.

Either cut things back very early and lose winter structure or leave plant material up and risk having bulbs start blooming without the garden cleaned up for spring emergence.

I've learned to take things piecemeal. Instead of mowing everything down like I did in the past, I will remove the duff in areas that have bulbs first to make way for them. Their foliage is preserved, and they can then shine in the garden. I put the cut debris either in piles or into compost to allow any creatures that may be residing in them to emerge with the warming weather.”

A primula emerging through the leaves

The gardeners at the Lurie Garden in Chicago also take a sustainable and ecologically helpful approach. They use a variety of maintenance techniques to enable better biodiversity:

“Our primary goals in preparing the garden for spring are:

☑️ Create a variety of opportunities for overwintering and nesting insects. The areas marked with tape are cut to 24” for stem nesting bees. We also leave some areas where the leaf litter is undisturbed. And bare soil too for ground nesting bees!

☑️ Leave the plant material in place as our “mulch” to decompose and add nutrients back to the soil and provide nesting material for birds. No added fertilizers needed here! The mowers and hedge trimmers help with this process.

☑️ Prepare the garden so our spring bulb display can shine! We time our cut back for when the snow is melted, the ground is still firm/frozen, and the first bulbs are just barely emerging (we do have to work around the snow drops).”

Iris histrioides 'Katharine Hodgkin' and I. h. 'George' in the snow this week.

Michael Wachter, gardener at Great Dixter, posted the following from his Ethnobotany class this week:

“15 new Students learning about the importance of habitat creation within gardens and the wider landscape. I really hope they will become ambassadors for their ecosystems after this course.

One word that was repeated over and over again was habitat resource connectivity as well as habitat structure heterogeneity. Simply speaking it stresses the importance of complexity within whatever site you are working on.

Looking at a place and thinking 'how can I introduce more complexity- weather that's through adding flowers, undulation, brick walls, logs or disturbance.

Disturbance energizes habitats our ecologist was saying - So gardening can be an act of energizing habitats.

Also we talked about the role of slugs as detritivores.

How slugs prefer to eat dead and decaying plant matter. So if our habitat or garden is too clean we will encourage slugs to eat live plants.

Create more habitat for slugs to decrease the impact of slugs on living plants (though not their numbers).”

Some interesting things to think about, from some great gardeners!

Before: The leftover leaves of a hybrid Helleborus orientalis in February in our Woodland Garden.

Cutting back Hellebores

Since there is often a long winter season here in northwestern PA, I have in the past been loath to cut off the evergreen leaves of Hellebores. But in the past few years a Hellebores dieback has afflicted a few of my plants, so now I do it as a hopefully-preventative measure to try to remove the spent foliage that may carry spores of disease into the new spring.

My new favorite tool for cutting back Hellebore leavs: ARS Needle-nose pruners

I have found a new favorite pair of clippers for Hellebores: ARS Needle-nose pruners

Very snappy and easily go through these tougher stems.

Cutting back Hellebore leaves: The plant before, leaves I removed, the flower buds after.

Other things to cut back in late winter

Woodland ferns are candidates for cutting back at this time of year.

Gardening is not just about plants; it's about cultivating a relationship with the natural world, nurturing our connection to the earth.

—Christopher Lloyd

Epimediums need a cut back at Hellebores cut time to reduce the likelihood of damaging flower shoots.

Winter shrub pruning

Cotinus ’Grace’ getting its late winter prune. It is cut back hard so that new branches and foliage will keep to border size. The long shoots I am removing grew just last year.

Early Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ benefits from the mow that the Birch Walk gets in October so that she can shine on the first warm days of winter/spring.

How do you handle winter/spring clean up these days?

Love to hear your thoughts!

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