Please help me with my first winter with my plants – What do I need to do now that the frosts are coming?
I have no experience with gardening apart from working on my grandad's allotment picking potatoes.
The first picture is from this morning, the others are from when we had a little sun and the last is where I started from. The side in the images is southern exposure with sun most of the day.
Plants in my garden:
- Dahlias, white, pink, red, purple
- Verbena bonariensis
- Passion flower vine – grew quite alot but did not flower this year
- Salvias, most have done quite poorly apart from the mystics spires which has exploded in size
- Limelight hydrangeas – There were three but the one at the bottom of the garden has either died or went dormant a month ago – one red mophead hydrangea that was given by my mother very small and has gotten out shadowed by my dahlias
- Echinacea purpurea Green Twister, a random phlox that is just starting to flower, a ground cover stonecrop that has flowered and is now yellowing.
- Evergreens: Hebe, Escallonia Iveyi, Camellia, a few small cherry laurels gifted that I've planted at the back fence
- Smaller border flowers that have been outcompeted by the Dahlias & a random Courgette plant which grew from compost
I've been getting my planting advise from here, Gardener's world and Gardenia.net
I put in pleached red robin trees along my left fence and replanted the bamboo originally in the garden into pots to screen along my patio. My neighbours in the back cut down all their mature trees so I'm getting a magnolia grandiflora to help screen on the back right side of the garden. There is a plum tree and a butterfly tree as well.
by Miszca
5 Comments
Leave stuff that’s still flowering until it stops flowering. Feeding bugs.
This is also my first year! Looks like you’ve done a great job. From advice I’ve seen on here – to do insects a favour, leave the dead stems and flowerheads over winter (many of them will overwinter in these I think?) and then clear them up in March once new growth is starting.
Don’t do anything…remove the dead foliage only and do your main cleaning and pruning in spring…dahlias doe will need winter protection from cold and especially moisture… Cut them back just above the soil…put some mulch and rubbish bags on top…to form a mound that will drain water away and cover the bags with more mulch…easy peasy and should come back in the spring if you do it right. You can dig them out too but in my experience it is not necessary in milder climates.
Just leave it be, when it’s all dies cut it back and chuck it on the bed to allow the nutrients to return to the soil. It’ll essentially have broken down by spring.
Also remove those canes from the trees. Should have been done at planting. They don’t do the trees any favours and the straps on them will girdle and eventually kill the tree if left
Don’t do anything, lots of life needs the piles of leaves etc to overwinter, in spring you can slowly start to add bits to the compost