I give most of the credit for our perennial flower beds to my wonderful wife.  Her designs follow a cottage style around our home which makes for a very relaxing and enjoyable setting.

Note: To see a larger sized image, please click on the picture.

A past mother's day gift from one of our sons.

A cascade of cranesbill over a small rock wall.

My favorite place to sit during the day!

Columbine

Summer Pastel Yarrow

Varigated Hosta

Happy Gardening!

Prior to the cold months of winter, it’s a good idea to assess your perennial flowers.  Clearing out the clutter from the plants will allow them to emerge unobstructed in the spring and will help them receive the moisture and sunlight they need after a long winter. 

The first thing you can do with your herbaceous perennials (those that die back to the ground each year) is to cut off all of the dead material.  To avoid damage to the plant, however, it is always best to make sure the plant has completely “died back”.  You can check this by observing the stems all the way to the soil surface.  If they are still green, don’t cut.  Otherwise, take your favorite gardening clippers and begin cutting the dead material back to within a couple of inches of the ground.  If you cut too low, you risk damaging the underground portions of your perennial flowers.

One word of caution for those living in snow prone areas, many of your plants may not die completely back before the snow covers them.  This is okay.  Just leave them and perform your cleaning maintenance in the spring after the snow has melted.  This is generally the case where I live in the Cache Valley portion of Idaho.  We frequently have winters that leave a foot or two of snow covering the ground until spring.  My wife actually prefers to do the perennial flower cleanup in the spring.  Your efforts in your garden should be dictated by your winter climate.

Good luck with your perennials and, if you enjoy this blog, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed using the orange button above.  You can also follow me on Twitter at @gardeningtoday.

Happy Gardening!

Mulching materials

Several materials are available for mulching flower beds.  They range from the inorganic forms such as weed barriers and plastics to the organic types like cottonseed hulls and wood chips.  Around our home we prefer to use wood chips.  The main reason we mulch our flower beds with chips is simply because they are extremely cheap.  You may have priced wood chip  or bark mulch in bags at your local garden center and be thinking that I am crazy.  But, that is not where we buy ours. 

Mulch source

Our local landfill offers a service that has become increasingly popular throughout the country.  They take all the green waste (trees, shrubbery, grass clippings, etc.) that anyone wants to recycle and turn it into products available for purchase.  They offer compost and wood chips of various grades.  The “premium” grade wood chips are priced at only $10 per cubic yard.  I own a little Mazda pickup and one yard fills the entire bed and is rounded at the top.  We mulch flower beds around our house at a depth of 3-4 inches.  So, for $10 we can cover an area approximately 108 square feet in size and it makes the flower beds look great.

Mulching flower beds provides many benefits to help your flowers and shrubs grow happily.  Check with your local landfill and see if they offer a green waste facility and you too could be mulching for less.

Happy Gardening!