With the arrival of autumn, I start thinking about preparing the garden for winter, most importantly ensuring the soil is protected. Here in the UK we usually have rainy, cold winters. Covering bare soil with a mulch or growing an overwintering crop helps prevent erosion and loss of nutrients by either insulating the soil from the elements or holding the soil in place through root growth. Flower beds can be protected by adding a thick layer of mulch (such as compost) over the soil, growing a winter cover crop / green manure, or covering them with a layer of cardboard or landscaping fabric. Another way you can keep some roots in the soil is to cut off only the above ground herbaceous parts of your annual plants and leave the root mass in the ground. This can help to stabilize the soil and as the roots begin to slowly break down they provide food for soil microbes and earthworms which in turn fertilize the soil.

This year I’ve chosen to use both a compost layer and green manure. This will help protect my soil and add back the nutrients that were used up growing last season’s flower crops. I’m not yet able to make enough compost to mulch all of my planting beds so I bought in about three tons of compost made from the green waste collected by our local council. This allowed me to spread 2-3 inches of compost on most of my beds. It’s lovely stuff and will really help insulate the soil. The other day I planted a few honesty plants into a mulched bed and found earthworms had already moved into the dark compost.

In most of the cut flower garden beds I’ve sown Italian ryegrass as a cover crop over the compost layer. Not only will it protect the soil, it will bring more green colour to the winter garden and then will add nitrogen to the soil when it’s cut down and incorporated in spring. Another reason I like this ryegrass is it can be sown as late as October so I can continue to harvest flowers into the autumn before I need to clear the ground for the cover crop.

In other parts of the garden, where I didn’t have enough compost for a good layer of cover, I used a homemade mulch of grass clippings plus shredded leaf material - a mix I collected the last time I mowed the lawn. I’m also leaving any leaves that fall into my flowerbeds from the nearby trees. They’ll give additional protection to both the soil and the critters that are overwintering there and will eventually break down to release nutrients back to the earth. This habitat provides a winter food source for the wildlife as well - I love to watch blackbirds flinging leaves around as they do their foraging through the flowerbeds.

These winter preparations do take some work - mainly weeding before applying mulch and then spreading the mulch - but it’s absolutely worth it for growing productive flower crops and even more importantly it’s an essential part of protecting the habitats we share with nature. I’d love to hear how you prepare your flower beds for winter - let me know in the comments!