For most of us in Scotland, October can often herald the end of the gardening year. The weather finally wins out, the evenings get darker, and the first frosts put an end to the floral season. It tends to creep up and before you know it November is here, the garden is a mud bath, and the last thing you want to do is go out and start pulling up the remnants of plants or picking up broken pots. Let me persuade you that a session spent putting your cut flower garden to bed for the winter is time well spent.

While this could apply to any area of the garden, the cutting garden does generally have a very well-defined season. Most of us are unlikely to be growing flowers at home through the winter once the first frosts have blackened the leaves of the dahlias.

Why not leave the patch to its own devices and worry about it in spring?

1. Your future self will thank you. If you get the work done now, come spring, everything will be accessible, equipment will be where you need it, and any perennial plants will get the best start possible. Clearing up is going to be a bit unpleasant whenever you do it, but it will be much worse with a winter’s worth of grime and damage involved.
2. Safety: for most of us, we still have to access our gardens in winter, and the cutting garden is likely to be part of that. Any area with debris that can get blown around, or that we might fall into, should be sorted before you add in dark nights and constant rain.
3. Hygiene: all plants will do better with clean equipment and clear, covered beds. Do not let your plot slide into squalor over winter.
4. Mulching: some autumn jobs are important for the success of your plot next year – particularly mulching.

Last Jobs of the Year

• For pretty much all of us in Scotland, we need to lift our dahlia tubers for storage over the winter. In milder spots, it might be possible to mulch them deeply and leave them in, but generally once there has been a couple of good frosts and the leaves are blackened, up they come.
• Wash them, let them dry, divide them if you want, then get them stored for the winter (see the advice in a previous issue of Scotland Grows magazine).
• Plant spring bulbs, including those in pots. Try to leave planting tulips until November, they need properly cold soil to prevent the spread of tulip fire.
• If you grow any tender perennials in your cutting garden, get them protected for winter. Pot them up, move them to a frost-free greenhouse, and even then, make sure you have horticultural fleece to hand for when frosts set in.
• Make sure autumn-sown annual seedlings are in a protected spot if they are not in a greenhouse. Remember to occasionally check and water plants in the greenhouse over the winter!
• If you have been drying flowers from your patch this year, check they have finished drying out and store them in a location where moisture will not get to them. Make it somewhere you will be able to access easily if you want them for festive displays.

Cutting Garden Beds

• Clear out everything that will not last the winter. Pull up and compost annuals, cut back dead perennial foliage, clear any surface debris unlikely to break down well.
• Mark the site of herbaceous perennials if you need to remember where they are come late winter. It would be a shame to plant a new bare root rose, for example, on top of your favourite peony.
• Mulch! Bare soil is never a good thing. You have asked a lot of your cutting patch this year, and over the winter the nutrients need to be replenished, as well as preventing erosion of top soil. A thick layer of garden compost, well-rotted manure, or last year’s leafmould is ideal, but whatever you can find is better than nothing. I often pop grass clippings onto empty beds during the last mowings of the year, anything that will feed the soil and suppress weeds. If all else fails, at least cover your beds with landscape fabric or well-secured cardboard.
• Consider green manures, crops that grow fast over winter that you then turn into the soil to add goodness before they can flower and spread. You do need to be a bit organised for this, as you must be sure to get them dealt with on time come spring.

Equipment

• Take down any temporary structures like sweet pea frames etc., especially if they may get blown around or damaged in storms.
• Sort and tidy away anything that is not fixed down. Pots, netting, buckets, watering cans. Reuse or recycle anything you can.
• Look after your tools. Clean everything down and put them away in a sensible place (think safety first for sharp things). Wipe down anything that might rust with an oily rag, particularly secateurs and floral snips.
• Clean up your greenhouse. This is one task you will be really glad you did come spring.

Note Making

Before you forget, sit down and write about anything you want to remember from this season. What worked, what did not? What do you want to grow more of next year, or are keen to try? The real review and planning will come over the winter, but believe me when I say that you will struggle to remember all the things you think you will.

Finally? Polish your halo, breath a sigh of relief, and retreat into the warmth to dream of flowers until springtime.

Olivia Thomas grows flowers that are better for people and the environment. Her passion is for sustainable floristry; for growing local flowers that she sells to florists and other businesses including cafes, bars, and restaurants, and locallly to the public whenever there are enough flowers available!

See more of Olivia’s beautiful blooms on her website, Instagram, and Facebook pages, or catch up with all her news on her Substack.