The Beginner's Garden, Phase 7

All you beginning gardeners have done is plant a very small garden. And, lo, fall has come, and you are, innocently and unwittingly, in the middle of a horticultural debate.

The fight is over what to do in the way of fall cleanup—tidy up or let things lie? Happily, this is one time when it's just as good to do almost nothing.

Until very recently, garden books recommended a rigorous fall cleanup. Shade gardeners, this would mean plucking dead leaves off your hostas, trimming ferns back, removing dead tree leaves from your garden bed. Sun gardeners, this would mean trimming seed-heads and stems from your echinacea, coreopsis, rudbeckia, and achillea, as well as cutting off all your plants' dead leaves and any tree leaves that blew in.

The reasoning of the tidy-up camp is that insects spend winter in the dying leaves at the base of plants. Fallen leaves might smother your perennial plants and keep the soil too wet, encouraging the diseases that come from rotting. The ideal late autumn garden bed used to be a clean sweep of brown earth, with a few cold-loving pansies in it.

The proponents of leaving your garden fairly messy have observed that withering perennial leaves and stems cover and protect a plant's vulnerable crown. Yes, the bad insects that chew on your plants may be spending the winter in those leaves. But so are many of the good insects that eat the bad insects come spring. The insects that seem bad to us make up a tiny percentage of the insect world. And if you want birds in your garden, you have to have plenty of insects for them to eat. Fallen leaves are good for your garden bed; smart gardeners add more. The one hitch is that the big leaves, especially oak, turn into a sort of Naugahyde. Chop them up if you have access to a leaf shredder or a lawn mower (or a machete).

It's time to pull up all your annual plants. They're done. Put them in a compost bin. You don't have a compost bin? That is another column, or a book, or a religion. (I've been accused of growing flowers and vegetables purely for the purpose of taking them to my compost heap. And of drinking coffee so that I can fork in the grounds.)

All summer I've been nagging you about deadheading in order to keep flowers on your flowering plants. Now you can stop; it's the appropriate time to let these plants go to seed.

This causes an aesthetic problem, however. As you look at your browning plants, you will understand the meaning of the word seedy for a human being in decline. You will need to do a little personal re-education. Forget withered. Forget, not to put too fine a point on it, dead. You will, I admit, see a lot of brown out your window. Think of it as taupe, mushroom, buff, fawn, or chestnut.

I think we can all agree that it's a good thing to appreciate plants in every stage and season—springing up, falling over, or fading away. British garden writer Noel Kingsbury has a chic new book called Seed Heads in the Garden. Europe's cutting-edge garden designer, Piet Oudolf, plans his bold sweeps of perennials and grasses to look their best dried up and sprinkled with snow. The let-it-go-to-seed movement arises from close observation of life in the garden. Finches and other small birds eat the seeds of echinacea, other garden flowers, and grasses. (In medieval art—The Madonna of the Goldfinch, for example—the finch is a reference to the Crucifixion because finches brave thorns to eat thistle seeds.)

Even if you're not undertaking an exhaustive cleanup, get out to your garden. This is the best time of year to be outdoors. I spent one of the happiest days of my life planting 100 daffodil bulbs for a friend's 50th birthday—in her Massachusetts yard by the sea on a bright fall day with a breeze. Spend this time of year adding rather than subtracting. Plant two or three more of the perennials you like. (In the stores they'll look terrible until spring, thus you can buy them on sale.) Plant some crocus, daffodil, or tulip bulbs. You'll know they're waiting under ground. And that spring is coming. When it arrives, you can do your cleanup in the presence of your flowering bulbs.

Extra credit: There's a fantastic flower—the Japanese anemone—that blooms this time of year, when the gaudier flowers of summer have faded. From a low clump of leaves, shaped like grape leaves, long stems emerge with clusters of white or pink flowers with yellow centers. Japanese anemones are easy to grow. (They need part shade, moderate water, and soil with some organic matter.) They are really worth it for their autumn show. The pink version surrounded by fallen yellow and red leaves is particularly spectacular.