When I was new to gardening I learned that fall is the time to put the garden to bed for the winter. This meant that all yard debris should be removed from the garden, leaving the garden bare for the winter and ready for a fresh start come spring. Gardens were supposed to have leaves removed, dead stalks cut to the ground, grasses nicely trimmed, and dead wood removed. However, none of that is good for a habitat garden. Leaving a garden bare through winter is unhealthy for the plants, soil, and the wildlife that use the garden. Also, it is boring to look at in a season when we desperately need something beautiful out our windows.
That was the old way of gardening, it is time for a new definition of putting the garden to bed for the winter. Our gardens should be a bed, a place of refuge, warmth, and safety through the cold months of winter. Wildlife needs safe places for hibernation, and to overwinter young to begin the spring generations. Garden soil needs a fluffy blanket of leaves to protect the life that will burst out come spring.
Dead branches in trees provide a winter nest for hibernating mammals as well as chambers filled with the eggs of bees and many other beneficial insects. Dead leaves on trees hold chrysalises of moths and butterflies as well as hibernating bats. As the leaves fall they bring their sleeping beauties to the ground where they keep warm in the leaf litter. Plant stems will also provide overwintering chambers for bees, beetles, and wasps. Rotting logs, in addition to hosting many insects, will also hold salamanders and frogs. Clumps of shrubs and grasses protect birds, small mammals, butterflies, and many other creatures trying to find a place out of the wind. Beneath the layer of leaves burrows have been dug into the soil by mammals, bees, and ants. Wildlife that is not equipped to dig its own borrow will find an abandoned borrow to spend the winter in. Step lightly in the garden in winter to avoid crushing the hibernating life below.
Not everyone sleeps away the entire season so the winter garden should also provide food and water. Leaving seed heads on flower stalks provides food for birds. Birds will also find food by eating over wintering bugs. Hosting a plentiful supply of insects will mean that there is plenty for the birds over winter as well as spring chick rearing, and still enough insects to pollinate the garden next year. Fruits that hang on through the winter nourish birds, wildlife, and insects. Late fall and early spring blooming flowers provide nectar on warm days when bees wake up as the ground warms. To provide water keep birdbaths filled regularly. Birds still like to bath in the winter and will flock to any source of unfrozen water.
Leaf litter and last years plant roots protect soil from frost, dry winter winds, and erosion from snow melt and spring rains. Plant stalks and rotting logs slow cold winds near the soil surface, collect snow drifts, and radiate heat. Decomposing plant matter enriches the soil. Helpful decomposers like beetles and fungi transform last years debris into fresh soil, even adding their own bodies to the decomposition eventually. Perennial plants are constantly growing new roots and loosing old ones. Decaying roots provide tunnels of organic matter deep into the ground creating pathways for decomposers into deeper layers of soil.
Today we understand how important our gardens can be to providing habitat for wildlife. Old methods of garden practices did not know about these connections and started in a time period when insect and bird populations were still robust. Now we have documented how wildlife populations are collapsing but home gardens can make a difference if they are managed with habitat in mind. We understand our responsibility and just need to create new habits to protect birds and insects. So this fall we can all put our gardens to bed with promoting habitat as the priority.
