Tucking the Garden In
Tucking the Garden In
What if preparing the garden for winter didn't mean clearing everything away- but rather making space for those who stay?
Sometime ago, our common practice for putting the garden to bed for the winter came to mean cleaning everything up. This makes it easy on our yard guys. We discriminate against no plant. We cut all the perennials to the ground, prune the shrubs into tidy shapes just in time for the holiday lights to get draped upon them, and we use the leaf blower until every last leaf has been scattered away to the curb. Bare soil and empty garden beds assure us that the season's work is done and that the garden has been properly tucked in.
But what if we looked at things through a different lens?
Autumn in the garden isn’t really an ending. As leaves fall from the trees and flowers fade, look closely at what is happening near the ground. There, another season is just beginning. Our gardens may hold more life near the soil if we allow them to grow quiet as autumn arrives.
What Looks Finished May Still Be Living
My first encounter with a Luna Moth happened one summer morning when I was probably around seven or eight years old. I was awake bright and early one morning. I popped outside to visit my family's barn cat. As I stepped out onto the porch of our farmhouse, something in the most delicious shade of pale green caught my eye against the white wood siding of the porch. A Luna Moth had taken refuge up near the porch ceiling and was peacefully sleeping there on the wall. It was huge and I was instantly mesmerized by not only its size but also by its color. When I returned later than day, the moth had disappeared, but my love for them has stayed.
Before the Luna Moth becomes the beautiful, winged creature that we all recognize, it spends a lot of its life hidden from view. As a caterpillar, it depends on the green leaves of our native oaks, sweetgum, and hickory trees for food. As it reaches maturity and is ready to form its cocoon to become a winged moth, it descends from the host tree and uses silk to wrap a fallen leaf around itself forming the cocoon. If it happens to be at the end of the season, it will remain there on the ground amongst the leaf litter in this cocoon over the winter.
The Luna Moth is not alone; other moths and butterflies also pass the winter in gardens and wooded edges. Some remain as eggs attached to twigs, some survive as caterpillars tucked into curled leaves on the ground and some, like the Swallowtail Butterfly may spend the cold months as a chrysalis fastened to very small upright stems that we hardly notice in the garden.
So, as you can see, the garden has not emptied as the summer comes to a close. Much of its life has simply become small and still. Waiting for Spring to find it once again.
Stems are More Than Stems
By late Fall, our native perennials like the coneflowers, mountain mint, goldenrods, asters, and bee balms can look lifeless. It's no wonder it's our inclination to want to cut them to the ground to tidy up. Yet hollow and pithy (stems with soft spongy centers) stems offer wonderful nesting places for some of our native bee species.
Most native bees do not live in colonies like the European honeybees that now also call our landscape home. Many native bees are solitary. During her active season, a female may create a narrow tunnel, divide it into tiny chambers, and leave pollen and nectar for each developing offspring. Some species build these nests inside the hollow or pithy stems of native perennials. Their young may remain protected inside those chambers through winter. Other native bees nest in the ground, beneath leaf litter, in dead wood, or near brush piles.
This means a gardener can provide flowers all season for these pollinators and by cleaning up their garden in the traditional way, still remove an important part of the habitat that they depend on. Pollinators need places to complete their life cycles as well as places to feed. To learn more about this, take a look at what The XercesSociety recommends.
Life Beneath Our Feet
At the end of summer, the bumble bee queens search for protected places where they can wait out the cold months ahead. The rest of the colony dies with the season, but the newly mated queen carries the possibility of next year's colony alone. She typically may burrow into loose soil, find shelter beneath leaf litter, or settle near a log or find another space that she thinks will remain undisturbed. She knows nothing of lawnmowers and leaf blowers. The leaves help her carry on the future of her colony.
Leaves help in other ways as well. They form an insulating layer over the soil, slowly returning organic matter to the earth, feeding the very plants from which they came. They help retain moisture as well as create habitat for countless small creatures. Those creatures, in turn, become part of the food web that supports birds and other wildlife.
I know what you are thinking... You don't want your garden and lawn to look a mess all winter long! This does not mean every leaf must remain where it falls. Thick leaves can smother turf grass, and wet leaves can make walkways slippery. But leaves can be moved beneath trees, tucked into garden beds, or gathered in a quiet corner instead of being shredded, bagged or blown away. In fact, let's try not to use the leaf blower at all. I'll leave that statement at that and leave you to do your own research on the ecological harm they cause.
The question is not whether we may touch the garden at all in the autumn, it is whether we can work toward creating space for ourselves and for the smallest inhabitants.
Edit Rather Than Erase
Here at The GreeneHouse, we have begun thinking of Fall cleanup as editing the garden rather than erasing the season that has passed.
Editing leaves room for both care and life.
Clearing the paths people need to walk. Remove diseased foliage and badly damaged plant material. Pull invasive weeds before they scatter their seeds. Clean up vegetable plants that need to go to the compost bin at the end of the season. Move heavy layers of leaves away from small evergreen plants that could be smothered.
Then pause.
Could the leaves beneath the shrubs remain? Could some seed heads stand through winter? Could that out-of-the-way corner hold a small brush pile? Could those perennial stems remain until Spring-or be cut to varied heights and left in place for stem-nesting bees?
A garden does not have to look abandoned to offer shelter. Clear the edges, mow the lawn, keep the gates tidy, plant season appropriate selections in your containers, and allow everything else to remain generous to wildlife.
Perhaps tidiness and habitat are not opposites. Perhaps they simply require us to decide where each one matters and not blindly go at it with the shears and blower.
A Different Kind of Winter Garden
The abundance of May is not to be found in the winter garden, but that does not mean that it doesn't have its own language and beauty.
It speaks in seed heads, curled leaves, tracks in damp soil, and the flash of a bird arriving for breakfast. It asks us to sit and look longer because its life is not arranged for easy viewing.
That may be one of the most useful lessons a garden can teach absence is not the same as emptiness.
Before we cut, blow, rake, and haul away, we can stop and wonder what may be resting there. Putting the garden to bed should not mean stripping away every blanket from the tiniest inhabitants.
Sometimes the kindest way to tuck a garden in is simply to leave part of it alone.
For Your Own Commonplace Book:
Choose one small part of your garden, porch, neighborhood, or usual walking route to observe through winter.
Record:
- What you notice there now
- What you are tempted to remove
- What might be using it for food or shelter
- What you decide to leave
- What you want to watch for in Spring
Add a sketch, pressed leaf, photograph, weather note, or a few words describing the sounds around you.
I noticed...
I wonder...
I found out...
Now I want to watch for...