This year, we have had two hard frosts here in Manlius before the majority of the leaves have fallen. This has rapidly separated the tender perennials, which are rapidly turning to mush or dried brown sticks, from those who don’t much care about a bit of cold. The grass, however, is still growing fairly vigorously. Fall clean-up is proceeding on two fronts. For the lawn, the challenge is to get enough of the leaves raked up so that it can be cut without producing finely shredded leaves. My ultimate objective each fall is to do a final mowing a bit shorter than normal with the hope that the leaves that blow around won’t stick in my grass in large quantities. This fall, that effort is very much a work in progress.
For the mushy perennials, however, cutting and clearing is ongoing. We cut everything right to the ground and then gently rake the cut perennials and leaves off the beds. We also clear away the leaves by hand from under and around evergreen perennials, especially hellebores and Christmas ferns. This is more of an aesthetic thing than something really necessary because they will have trapped more leaves by spring. The beds we have already cleared are bare and not prone to trapping leaves still on trees. These instead end up in piles dictated by wind patterns in the garden, where they are much easier to gather up and remove.
I tend to leave the ornamental grasses turn brown and remain as a winter garden feature, cutting them back in very early spring before they start to grow again. I handle the ornamental bamboos, and the yuccas similarly. These plants give the garden additional interest well into the winter
Once the leaves have fallen, we will do a thorough fall pruning. I like to wait until the structure of the shrubs and trees is most visible. Some trees, I prune just to thin out the sail and make it not so heavy and dense visually. Crabapples and some magnolias grow large number of vertical secondary branches over the summer and I remove these because they ruin the ornamental value of the overall branching patters. Grafted trees often have similar vertical branches around the trunk that have grown up from the root tissue below the graft. These also get pruned away. Some really vigorous shrubs (e.g. smoke bush cultivars) get a late fall haircut back to the shape and size I want them to have in the spring. Other individual smoke bush specimens, I have allowed to grow without any pruning and they are now small, very ornamental trees. It depends on what the purpose of the planting is. If it is to be a small woody plant as part of the design, then pruning is essential. Weigelas are in the same category. I usually leave them grow wild for the season and then prune them hard, back to what I want them to be next season.
I also have a few bigger trees that I have lost, but which grow vigorous shoots from the remaining trunk. If these are attractive, I permit them to become a shrub and then cut them back to the ground in late fall. My favorite is the Forest Pansy redbud. The original tree, one of my favorite in the garden, broke up in an ice storm some years ago, but the new shoots each year from the remaining trunk are a nice color and texture contrast to the surrounding plants.
After years of trying to save above-ground parts of the several buddleia cultivars I grow, I now just cut them back to the ground once they are thoroughly dead and leave them to grow a whole new plant in the spring. They are certainly vigorous enough to do that.
The things below ground in the earth after clean-up will quietly await spring. They do a bit better with more continuous snow cover, but such is becoming rarer over time. We get lots of lake-effect snow, but it now tends to melt.
There have been no deer in the garden now for months. Hurrah. My fencing project is succeeding.
The deer-control clock stands at 89 days.
