Time to Move, Prune and Divide Sleepy Plants
I love the exuberance of summer, but I confess I look forward to the tidiness of winter.
In summer, things are growing, growing, growing. It’s an exciting time for a gardener, but the garden always seems a little out of control as it careens toward fall.
In autumn, everything quiets down. You may hear the rustle of fallen leaves and the splashing of birds taking a bath, but quiet descends on the garden like a snowfall.
It’s as if the act of growing actually makes noise, and when plants slow down, they become quiet, although I’m sure it has more to do with atmospheric conditions.
By winter, the garden is nearly noiseless. Even though there are a few plants that wait until now to bloom, most are fast asleep and I find myself tiptoeing through the garden, lest I wake these peaceful plants.
Silly, I know, especially when you consider that there is so much one can do while plants nap.
That bold, gray-leaved hellebore from Corsica (Helleborus corsicus) or H. argutifolius, for instance, can be moved only in early winter. That was one of my projects this past weekend--to dig one out from under a shrub.
Moving plants while they are nearly dormant is one of winter’s big opportunities. It’s similar to taking a sleeping child from the car and depositing him in his bed. He’ll sleep right through it and awake wondering how he ended up there, when the last thing he remembered was saying goodbye to grandma.
Which is why I waited until December to move the hellebore, hoping it would not notice that it was now growing several yards away from where it last was.
The hellebore has a small root system and almost none of those hair roots that bind soil into a root ball, and because it grows in dry shade, the bone-dry soil just falls away from the roots.
Try to move it in any other season and it would wilt before you even got it out of the ground. But in winter, it sleeps through the whole process. Many plants can be moved in winter that shouldn’t be touched at other times of the year.
This is also a good time to prune back some of that summer exuberance, shearing off old flower stalks or simply tidying plants up. Perennials in particular actually grow better if they are cut back each winter.
You might be surprised at what you find under all that foliage. I used to discover a good quarter of my kids’ toys there, but now I find less exciting stuff, although I still find the occasional action figure.
This last weekend, I uncovered a green beer bottle and lots of foil gum wrappers out front, and one of my pruning shears in the border in back.
Tidying up is perhaps better done in very early spring, at about the same time you are pruning the roses, although I can never wait that long to restore order to my garden.
Waiting until early spring, you can enjoy the seed heads, the few remaining flowers and all that foliage through winter.
Where it gets really cold--freezing, in fact--waiting is definitely a good idea because mature growth is less likely to burn in a frost. Young, new growth--encouraged by pruning--is very tender to frost.
Should any growth get nipped by frost--and that seems likely inland this cold year--don’t prune it off until spring, when the danger of frost is past, or you will encourage tender, new growth that might get nipped by another frost. Wait until spring to clean up frost damage.
When pruning, go slowly and think twice. While most plants respond to pruning in a positive way, some positively resent it.
Sunroses, lavenders and salvias are three that may actually die if you cut back into what gardeners call “old wood.” Old wood is growth that no longer has lots of leaves on it but is mostly gray stem and bark.
Why some plants react this way I do not know. It is one of my personal garden mysteries, but I can tell you I’ve had to replace many sunroses, lavenders and sages for this reason. I killed them with tidiness.
Some salvias thrive when you cut them back, such as one of my favorites, Salvia chiapensis. When I pruned a big one nearly to the ground, after a city crew dropped a magnolia limb on it, it came right back and looked like its old self in just months.
But try this on one of the fragrant native salvias, such as Salvia clevelandii, and it will die back to the ground.
Be suspicious of any salvia with a Mediterranean-climate ancestry and proceed slowly, staying out of old wood, and that goes for those two other Mediterranean natives, lavender and sunroses.
If you are unsure of what can be cut back, spread plants apart and look to see whether new shoots are coming from lower on the stems or even from the ground.
If they are coming from the ground, such as on Japanese anemones, you can cut the plant all the way to the dirt. Otherwise, simply cut back to the new sprouts. If in doubt, wait until growth begins in early spring, say in late February or early March, so you can see where to cut back to.
This is also the season to divide perennials. Every clump-forming perennial plant, from bird of paradise to agapanthus, needs digging and dividing at some point or it will become too big to handle.
As they get bigger and bigger, the centers tend to stop flowering. When you divide plants into smaller bits, you can toss out the old center sections.
If you are unsure what needs dividing, look for plants that grow as a cluster of stems, each arising from the ground. Again, spread the plant apart so you can make sure that it is a colony of plants growing closely together. Plants with single stems obviously cannot be divided.
When you are done with this cutting back, moving and dividing, you will see why I like the manicured look of the winter garden. Everything is neat and tidy and in its proper place. It’s the gardener’s big chance to regain control over the garden, if only for a moment.
Things will start growing again in spring, and by summer you will wonder why you planted so much in such a small space. But right now, in winter, you can actually see bare ground between plants.
To cap off a weekend of cutting back, moving and dividing, do something with all that soil that is now visible.
Cultivate it lightly with a garden cultivator, which has curved-over tines, scratching the surface so it is no longer hard or crusty. Don’t dig more than an inch deep or you’ll rip out roots (don’t cultivate around camellias, which have roots right on the surface).
A light cultivation will loosen the soil so rain can penetrate--even light rain, which may be all we get this winter if forecasters are correct.
But just in case we get some downpours (and they don’t have to last long), consider mulching the soil after you have cultivated it, not to conserve moisture as in summer, but to blunt the force of raindrops so they do not destroy the texture of the soil or splash mud on plant leaves.
Now you really have a sight to behold--a garden that is neat and tidy, with everything in its proper place, and mulched to boot. The gardener’s craft is seldom so visible.
