Finding beauty in winter's rest

Would you like to have permission to just let your garden go untended this fall?

Would you like to look out at dead plant stems and leaves in your garden and have no guilt?

You can. Check out "Don't Tidy up Your Winter Landscape" in the Fall 2008 Virginia Native Plant Society bulletin. You will not only feel fine about slacking off, but you will also feel good about it, because you are doing the right thing, the article says.

Cleaning up all those stems and seed heads means you are cleaning up and removing important food and shelter for wildlife. In addition, dead plants "retain moisture and stabilize ground temperature." They "break the force of rain and protect the ground surface from packing," the article says. Some of the spent flowers, such as hydrangeas and sedums, dry and retain a certain beauty all winter.

If you need more reinforcement to resist cleaning up this fall, you can get it from Theresa Augustin, curator of natural areas at Norfolk Botanical Garden. In the Native Plant Garden Augustin doesn't cut back any of the perennials until late winter or early spring, so they can provide winter habitat for birds and other critters.

"There's a lot of activity in there all season long," she said.

Augustin also makes sure that any woody material she does cut back goes into a brush pile where mantis and other insect egg cases will be protected until they hatch in the spring.

Pope Woodard, who gardens at the North End of Virginia Beach, has a perennial bed at the front of his house that he allows to do its own thing in the fall, too. Woodard likens leaving plant materials in the bed to "free mulch." This layer of dying and decaying material keeps soil from eroding and provides habitat for wildlife, he said.

"The bed has matured and is on 'auto- pilot,' " other than some early spring weeding, summer watering and pulling spreading perennials, he said. It is a mixture of golden brown fall colors with some late bloomers, like helianthus and salvia, still on hand. After the first major freeze, he might cut back the plants, leaving behind about 6 inches of stems and leaves as mulch.

As one who has never suffered much guilt about what I do or don't do in the garden, I've always noticed that my untidy winter beds are great habitat for little birds. I never thought much about why until I read the article. At first, goldfinches will wrest away any seeds left in the seed heads and later will search around to find tiny seeds on the ground. Wrens dart in and out of the garden all winter finding insects in the warm area under the branches and fallen leaves.

But it's the white-throated sparrows that give me the most pleasure. Hardly a day in winter goes by when I don't hear the little brown sparrows, scratching in my spent garden.

Augustin says train your eyes to see something beautiful in what you once thought was unsightly.

"I love the way grasses and old seed heads look in the frost and snow, if we're lucky," she said.

To find the article, visit www.vnps.org. Click on "See State Newsletter" at the bottom.

Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net