By Master Gardener Volunteer Lesley Arrandale
In early November the dry spell seemed to be coming to an end, with rain in the forecast. The hurricane season is winding down, but until November 30 there’s still a chance of more storms. The weather is always a consideration for gardeners or for anyone who enjoys the great outdoors, be it close to home or in some beautiful park or wilderness.
As autumn makes way for winter, we see the changes in our fall blooming flowers. They are setting seeds, which is a forerunner of things to come, but there’s also a sense of decay as stems darken, dry, and become brittle. Those hollow stems become places for some of our native bees and other insects to overwinter. This is a time to consider how, or indeed whether, to tidy our landscapes.
One of the easiest things to do to support wildlife is to “leave the leaves,” especially beneath trees and in flowerbeds. Insects that inhabit deciduous trees often have a lifecycle which includes a spell on the ground, cocooned — often literally — in the shelter fallen leaves provide, or in the soil below. If you are tackling a mess of leaves on a lawn, rake them into beds, either beneath trees or shrubs, or among your flowers, but take care not to smother the plants. Leaves act as a mulch that can break down relatively quickly and supply valuable nutrients to the soil: nature’s soil builder. If you have more than you can use in your beds, running a mulching mower over a light leaf fall on the lawn will supply nutrients to benefit the grass. For the rest, find an out-of-the-way place to heap them up, where insects and other creatures can make use of them. Left for a year or so they will have decomposed into friable leaf mold, which would enrich and improve your soil. Or simply use leaves as the “brown” component in your compost pile. You could even offer them to a neighbor gardener. To take them to the curb for collection is like giving money away!
Those dry dead stems which are potential insect nurseries may not appeal to your eye, but rather than remove them completely, trim them back to a minimum of 12 inches, preferably a little taller, to give the insects a chance to complete their lifecycles. Take the cuttings and pile those up out of the way to provide more shelter for tiny creatures. If the plants are perennials which die back to the ground, the remaining stems can be useful reminders of their locations.
Clumping grasses also provide shelter for wildlife. If you feel compelled to cut them back, hold off until spring when new growth is beginning to emerge. Over winter they can give interesting structure to the landscape, and they may also house queen bumblebees nesting down at the base. If you like to watch your backyard birds you may have seen how grass seeds appeal to birds like the beautiful painted bunting.
Your lawn has also been slowing down — meaning it will need mowing less often, if at all. For more information on lawn care, and other aspects of gardening, check out https://sfyl.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn-and-garden/lawn-maintenance/. It’s a potential starting point for leisurely browsing now the nights are drawing in.
I’m very aware that I should look at my gardening activities in relation to the garden’s other inhabitants, to the extent that I tend to leave things alone for too long, attempting to avoid disturbing the wildlife. To explain, I let a weedy wildflower — Bidens alba, or beggar’s ticks — get out of hand. It simply took over an area which should have been better managed. I know it is one of the best providers for butterflies, bees and pollinators in general, and it is hard to find suitable, better-behaved substitutes. Finally biting the bullet and getting down to the task of clearing some of it, I disturbed an eastern glass lizard. Luckily I was working with hand tools and didn’t harm it. But now it has an area lightly covered with pine straw as part of its territory, instead of the shady undergrowth which gave it shelter. There are other small plants like wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) that will fill in some space, but it could take a while. My lesson? Try to be more in tune with how plants grow and multiply, and lightly edit and control them to make the best habitat for both wildlife and me. I’ll see how that works out!
