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Fall Cleanup Time: Death and Rebirth in the Garden

© Carol Wallace

Fall came with a vengeance this year. One day the sun was shining and we spent our evening sitting in the gazebo sipping coffee and admiring the tropical waterlilies. The next day we were racing from garden to garden with boxes, blankets and towels trying to protect tender plants from an unexpected freeze.

Naturally, this happened on a day when my husband and I both worked late. Digging the plants up was out of the question. Instead, we worked by flashlight, wrapping and tucking as fast as we could.

"So this is why they call it 'putting the garden to bed'," I muttered, struggling with a 7' tall brugmansia that defied even my largest bedspread. My husband, busy tucking in the dahlias (with my prized antique linen sheets!) didn't even crack a smile.

There seemed little to smile about the next day. We rose to the sight of blackened annuals. The wrapped plants had survived, but the edges closest to their coverings were curled and burnt with frost. All 17 eagerly awaited brugmansia buds had dropped off.

This weekend I began to clean up the dead and dying. Crisped stems and fallen leaves all went into a huge pile. We fed these to our chipper/shredder and were amazed at the nice piles of mulch we were creating. I brightened considerably, realizing that my fallen soldiers were going back to the earth, only to help others to live in a more fertile environment.

But the greater miracle came when I had finally cleared away the debris and exposed the garden soil to daylight again. My gardens tend to resemble small jungles, since I can't resist trying out new plants and new planting combinations. The only time you can see bare earth is early spring and during cleanup. Only this earth wasn't bare at all.

Seeds dropping to earth had germinated. I had nigella blooming in short, lacy mists of blue. A few brave nicotiana still bloomed, and the roses were still budding. A look at the browning remains of iris and daylilies showed new life peering above the soil. A waterlily colcichum popped up at pondside--a new life that didn't even begin until most of the garden began to go to sleep.

Saffron crocus peered up cautiously from their bed of mulch, and the heaths I planted in the spring suddenly budded forth and began to flower. Leaves fell from the red twigged dogwoods exposing flaming scarlet branches; the junipers assumed their winter coats of purpley mauve. Most of the garden wasn't dead, or even dying. It was merely going through a change.