Quirky Bird Top Tips for the Winter-Spring Great Garden Tidy

This is a garden job that people have varied timing preference for. Some like to do it as soon as the plants die down in autumn, cutting back and clearing everything away for winter. Others like to wait until after winter so they can enjoy frost on the seeds heads and give the plants crowns a bit more protections with leaf debris against the cold. I fall into the later camp, letting the garden sleep under the blanket of debris, letting seeds fall to hopefully germinate in spring and to enjoy the silhouettes of seed heads in frost.

The stream garden in the nursery before it's tidy up, as you can see the rest of the nursery
awaits its turn behind

................. and after with a mulch of home made compost to improve our clay soil

I always enjoy this job as I find it immensely satisfying to turn weedy, messy borders in to neat tidy borders, refreshed and ready for spring flower beds. Then you can easily see the plants emerging after their winter sleep and bulbs beginning to flower. Again as with timing everyone has their own way of doing this task, mine is by no means the only way, but the way I like to work.

In my last garden, tidying the woodland garden, before on the left and after on the right

~ Cutting back plants and lifting leaves
Firstly I cut back all the dead stems, leaves etc from the plants and lift weeds, gathering it all up into my big recycled tyre bucket and ultimately into the compost bin. Most of the plant material goes in the compost heap unless it is very woody, then it goes on the bonfire. I also use tidying up as an opportunity to check on which plants are struggling or maybe not survived. Then I can make a decision whether to replace them or plant something new.

Before tidying in the old veg garden in my previous garden

and after

~ Re-edging lawns or fixing border edges
It's all good exercise after hibernating over winter! Once all the debris is cleared off the border I can if any lawns need re-edged, which I do with a half-moon edging knife and shears. If larger areas need fixed, I cut out a square of turf larger than the whole and turn it 180 degrees so the border has a smooth new edge and the hole can be filled in with some soil and re-seeded. If the beds have a wooden edge, etc, it's a good opportunity to do some maintenance before plants start growing again. This can be replacing wooden edges, hammering in loose pegs, etc.

Tools at the ready to tidy another border in my last garden

~ Forking / digging / no dig
Here again there are many preferences, some people fork over the soil, loosening up compacted areas, if it's it a large area (veg beds) it can be dug over and then there is the no dig approach to gardening. This is something I have recently been considering. Because when you think about the borders in the nursery which have a bark mulch don't get dug or forked at all and the plants grow very well......... Any beds that don't get bark get a home made compost mulch, so the soil doesn't need  forked to make it look good. Food for thought there moving forward.


~ Feeding
After all the clearing, forking, and tidying it's time to prepare the borders and beds for new growth. Again we all have our favourite general fertiliser that we use. For many years I have used pelleted organic chicken manure and I find plants do very well with it, it's organic and completely natural. It gets scattered over the borders, this is useful not only to boost the plants but also if the soil is poor to enrich it.

One of the borders in the nursery with its
compost mulch

~ Compost mulch
 Finally I cover the border in home made compost from our compost heaps. This mulch seals in moisture, feeds the plants and nourishes and improves poorer soils. Over the year worms and me hoeing the beds will work the compost in and over time the soil does improve. I did this for the fifteen years I was at my last garden and by the time I left the very poor clay soil in the borders was becoming a lovely workable soil.

Time and patience as in all things gardening.

This was not in winter, strangely enough! But it's good to relax and
enjoy all our hard work after a day in the garden

~ Enjoy the fruits of your winter labours
Lastly, stand back and enjoy the really satisfyingly feeling of those tidy borders, beds and garden, ready to jump into life, even if you feel sore and tired! Have a coffee and stand at the window in the warmth and watch the bulbs emerging and the first signs of growth, that's what I do, as I plan what I'll put in any spaces I've found.


Happy gardening!

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Sowing the Seeds of this years garden plans

HAppy new year time to start the big garden tidy up