Gone to seed

It has been a strange autumn. Someone asked me recently what they should do with their iris, cut them down or leave them for a while. The foliage was apparently looking tatty though just about alive but to confuse the situation fresh flower buds were developing expectantly. Not bad for late November, but then perhaps not good either.

In September there were reports of a false autumn in Scotland and just this weekend I was reading that the mild weather recently has tricked some species, both plant and animal, into thinking that spring has come early. All very confusing, I’m sure, for those species for which changing weather dictates their activities. For the species homo hortensis, otherwise know as gardeners, it illustrates that it is perhaps always best to just go with the flow, rather than garden to strict schedules.

On the question of the iris, my advice was to leave it, after all the plant will tell you when it has gone to sleep. And anyway why cut dead stems down at all, for their value in winter is many-fold. The dead leaves and stems, can look messy, its true, but they do provide some protection to the crown of herbaceous perennials during the coldest weather, which may be of increasing importance if very cold winters are going to become the norm. They also provide a habitat for small insects to hibernate through the winter. If you look carefully around your garden between November and March you will find ladybirds wedged into all sorts of nooks and crannies from empty seedpods to cracks in tree bark to the underside of a pile of leaf litter. All very cosy.

Now you might be thinking that’s all very well but what’s in it for you, after all you are the one who is going to be looking at the mess all winter. Well there are two other advantages to resisting the temptation to cut back perennials as soon as they die off. The first is that many plants have attractive seed heads that retain their architectural shape right through the winter. Some of the best and boldest include globe thistles, alliums, Jerusalem sage and grasses such as Miscanthus, but look closely and you will notice less obvious attractions such as the beautifully shaped seed pods, like a jester’s hat, of paeonias, and others. What’s more you can always harvest these stems to make a quite striking and atmospheric seasonal arrangement inside the house for Christmas.

However the reason, possibly above all others, for leaving the dead and decaying is to attract the living. Just a small area of unkempt border will become a magnet for a surprising number of birds that will arrive in chattering gangs to enjoy a good feed on the seeds and insects. In just five minutes at the weekend I was amazed to see a wren, a blackbird, some blue, great and long-tailed tits, a greenfinch, and a mistle thrush (not to mention a brown thing that was beyond my limited ornithogical knowledge to identity) darting and jostling on the decaying fruit of the espaliered apple and the seedheads of our (very small) meadow strip.

So while you might be itching to give the garden a good tidy up why not holster your secateurs for now and just look out of the window instead.