You Grow Girl™

Ah yes. There is nary more apt a quote when it comes to gardeners. Last Sunday, I reconciled myself to the inevitable and commenced getting my garden ready for winter. It's not a tedious task with particularly a lot involved. It's more the symbolism of it all that gets me misty. Another season has come to an end and it will be at least six months before I'll have the scent of roses to greet me as I leave the house (well either that or dung. It depends if the police horses have been in my neighborhood.)

Any gardener knows that most plants are hardy creatures. Preparation for winter is not a "must do". You won't be faced with a plot of mud come spring just because you decided to stay inside and eat potato chips and watch videos. But let's face it: winter's a bitch and anything you can do to lessen its impact on your little patch of Eden will be well rewarded.

So what did I do? Essentially, three things: cut, clean and protect.

The first thing I did was get everything trimmed down so that I could clean up the garden more efficiently. The main items I pruned were my butterfly bush and roses. The butterfly bush was trimmed to about half a metre. I trimmed the roses to just under a metre high. I don't give them a hard prune (i.e., to 6 inches or so) until the spring.

Pruning is particularly important for climbers. I have a yellow climber in the southeast corner or my garden that is about four-and-a-half metres high by the end of the season. (This is without a trellis or wall support.) This needs to be trimmed down to prevent wind damage, not only to the plant but to passersby as well. All it takes is a good January wind to give some poor soul a face full of thorns, although technically, I'm not sure if a rosebush could be charged with assault.

I usually stop pruning my roses overall by early September. That way, rose hips develop by late October. The little round bulbs are a nice bit of decoration in the garden through the winter, especially after a light snowfall.

I would also recommend that you invest in a good quality pruner, preferably a paired set with a thinner pruner for blossoms and stems, and a thicker pruner or shears for stalks and branches. Some of the rose bushes I pruned had stems of about half an inch.

As for my shorter perennials, I leave them as they are. I find the first good frost collapses them. Their decomposition then provides nourishment to the soil for the next season. This approach helped me bring my garden back from the breach, and I don't use any fertilizers other than the odd dalliance with Miracle-Gro. I leave my annuals in the garden as well. Anything left over in the spring I just mulch/till back into the soil.

If you just don't feel safe foregoing a fertilizer, then I would suggest consulting with your local garden centre to get something suited to your garden's needs.