Clearing the garden for winter

Now is the time to plan for winter and beyond, says Ruth

- Ruth Hayes

WE have drained the mild days of autumn to their dregs, eking out every last drop of warmth and colour, and now it’s time to turn our attention to the coming winter and prepare the garden accordingly.

I always think this is a bittersweet time; on one hand we are tearing out and composting summer bedding and potting up tender perennials to move them undercover and leave the beds bare.

We are putting away summertime things, cutting back perennials, taking down fairy lights and cleaning garden furniture before storing it away. The leaves fall and the garden suddenly looks naked.

It can be a sad time, but this is also the season for looking ahead with optimism, for planning next year’s plants and crops, gathering ideas from magazines such as AG and our fantastic sister website gardeningetc.com, for getting the garden ready for new arrivals and for reshaping areas and creating the garden you’ve always wanted.

My list of autumn and winter garden plans is extensive and includes putting up a robust wooden trellis to replace a very old wire one that collapsed while holding up a large clematis. This will also involve hard pruning the clematis, which will be a substantial job.

I also need to remove a dead Philadelphus shrub, which will make space in a border, leaving me with the delicious additional task of planning what to put there.

Then there’s reorganising the shed (which will be put so far onto the back burner it will hopefully end up out of sight) and the renovation of an overgrown corner in the front garden.