Indulging a messy winter

Is your garden messy? Is it winter-strewn and rain-sloshed? Are autumn’s leaves still swirling in the corners, and are the perennials still standing uncut, decayed and brittle?

If so, congratulations! On behalf of our village wildlife, Sustainable Overton salutes you! Tempering the natural urge to tidy things up and, instead, indulging a messy winter is one of the best things we can possibly do to support Britain’s ailing biodiversity in our own gardens.

Anise hyssop in winter

A winter-tidy garden might appeal to the meticulous-minded, but it can lack so much potential: leaf litter provides shelter and habit for numerous insects; fallen sticks and rotting logs are a wellspring of nutrient-providing fungi. Seeding perennials offer forage for birdlife at the coldest time of the year, while hollow stems — particularly those of herbaceous plants such as mullein, Michaelmas daisy, sunflower and sedum (Hylotelephium) — have become snug overwintering homes for ladybirds and spiders.

This latter fact helped restrain my own inclinations to tidy up the garden this winter. Cutting back some dead and yellowed sedum flowers earlier this month, I snipped a stem and revealed a little spider hunched in the cavity. I left it alone, and put away the secateurs. And so, this year, the garden is looking more decidedly disheveled than ever, but all the better for the slumbering creatures.

In a few weeks time (yes, just a few weeks!), spring will at last return, with new green shoots beginning to stir, whatever the weather — the time for tidying will be upon us. The hard bit will be navigating how one retains such vital habitat in the process. So, a few simple thoughts:

1. Chop a lot, leave a little: exercise restraint when cutting back your perennials (rudbeckias, asters, salvias, sedums, catmint etc), rather than clear-cutting everything to the ground. By leaving a few stems around ten or so centimetres high, they’ll continue to provide habitat and, visually, they’ll soon be swallowed up by the new season’s growth.

2. Leave some discrete leaf piles. If you like your beds cleared and/or mulched for spring, that’s fine! But perhaps consider leaving some intentional piles here and there — even just one. You can ‘pen’ them within a border or beneath trees or shrubs using a surrounding of twigs, weighing them down with a few heavier sticks.

3. Stack a few logs in a corner of the garden. Ideally situated in a semi-shaded spot, a simple log pile is profoundly beneficial for wildlife. 

Matt Collins lives in Overton and is a garden writer and head gardener at the Garden Museum in London. Check out his website here https://www.mattcollinsgarden.co.uk