I am not advocating leaving everything in a shambles, but a gentle transition to neatness and readiness for the spring is a much better option than blitzing it all now. To appreciate this you need to take time to tune in to the subtleties of winter - looking is just as important as the acting on it. The ghosts of the last season may be literally a shadow of their former selves but, when you take a closer look, they are as beautiful in a different way.
The rhythms of decay have their own pace, and a good reason for taking the time they do. Next time you are out there, crouch down to see how the fallen leaf litter is being pulled back into the ground by earthworms. The first time I saw this, I couldn't work out why all the leaves were pointing up from the ground with one end pulled in, but leaves are food for the worms and the bacteria and the decomposed leaves provide much needed humus for the soil.
Then turn your eye to what the last season has left behind as skeletons. Like miniature cities reaching skyward, many are home to insects and a host of other living things, and as structures they are often one of the most beautiful aspects of the winter garden. Look to the hedgerows, roadside embankments and waste ground and it is easy to argue that this is their best season, with the colour pared back now that the greens have receded.
I love green, but in the winter months you realise that the predominance of green often prevents you from registering the detail - and the winter skeletons are all about detail. Bleached grasses strike their pale vertical lines into the landscape like a mirage when you see them en masse. Some spent stems crisscross as they weaken at the base to break with the upright, but it all has its charm with tangles of vetch hanging in blackened nests and dots of chocolate brown marking the presence of long-gone moon daisies.
High above the grasses are the last of the umbels - wild carrot, hemlock and sweet cicely, with its sooty seeds hanging in pale cages. Despite appearances, winter is also far from monochrome, and the range of browns, buff, cinnamons and oranges seem infinite in their informal weave. The rusts heat up when it is wet, the blacks darken so that teasel is as dark as coal in a smouldering grassland.
When it is dry, the parchment tones of the grasses whiten and bleach to silver on a rare bright day. That's one good reason for leaving some rough ground if you have the room, and certainly a rich inspiration for what you can bring together for winter interest in the garden. When planning perennial planting, I always choose a good percentage for their ability to leave behind something of note for this season.
Some, such as tradescantia and many of the geraniums, wither back to nothing, their foliage dragged to earth by the worms to leave only the expectant crown. But many leave behind the woody structure they formed in the summer, devoid of foliage perhaps and transformed into something quite new and magical. These forms are just as interesting as the summer garden if you play with them in this so-called 'down time'.
They provide a framework on which frost and snow (if we have it) can alight, and on which sunlight can be caught where it might otherwise fall to ground without interruption. Many of the spent stems are also rich with seeds. Left standing, you might find your garden a flurry with bluetits feasting on the fennel seeds or picking over the russety heads of the Phlomis russeliana Each skeleton has its own level of endurance - fennel and many of the grasses persist until they start to look out of place among the March newness, so I edit them back only when they lose their will and succumb to inevitable decomposition.
The silvery stems of perovskia also go right through, being reduced only by the need to give them a hard prune in March, but some are as fragile as they look and will last just long enough to be worth it. The eryngiums in my garden are a good example. The tall stems of E agavifolium make a valiant start, with their cinnamon stems held high above the remnants of their neighbours, but they have all toppled by January and lower the tone of the bolt upright miscanthus nearby.
Their cousins, E giganteum (aptly named Miss Willmott's Ghost), have a little more endurance, but it will not be long now before their silver crowns go from net to nothing. The reference to the ghost in this case has nothing to do with their skeletal forms, but to the charming story that Ellen Willmott, a 19th-century gardener, used to scatter the seed surreptitiously in other people's gardens as she was shown around, for it to appear magically the following year. I leave mine until they topple and only remove them to the compost heap at the last moment.
It is easier to be casual in a larger space, but many of the best skeletons take up little room and stand bolt upright. Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' is a classic example of a grass that endures almost everything that a winter can throw at it, and during that time it will be the best armature for frost and the wick for low slanting winter light that blazes on its stems. The miscanthus are also hard to rival, continuing to rustle in wind and bleached to a range of natural colours that range from bone whites through to spicy browns.
Those that hold their plumage, such as M sinensis 'Silberspinne', are bright enough on a sunny day to erase any melancholy in an instant. The sedums form a low-level horizontal plain of rusty seedheads. I like them more in the winter time without the colour of flower.
As plants get older and more lax their tendency to open out in the centre to form a cartwheel is revealed in all nakedness, with the fat buds for next year waiting in the centre. In a group this is amazing to look at, and it always reminds me of coral in a reef or Catherine wheels spinning. Good old-fashioned S 'Autumn Joy' (aka 'Herbstfreude') stands at about 30cm, while the much larger growing 'Matrona' often forms a wheel as much as a metre across.
You need to wade in at the end of March to remove the remnants, as they keep going if you let them, but by that time they are tinder dry and light as a feather, snapping easily from the rosette. I often scatter opium poppies as a complement and their pods teeter on leafless stems high above the sedums, and in snow, each has a hat of white. Clearing can be hard to resist, but the longer you leave it the more of a chance there will be for anything that can rot to make its way back into the ground to improve it in the coming growing season.
Some plants, such as angelica, just can't keep it together for the duration and are quickly toppled by winter rot and wind. When the stems totter, you should resist the urge to have that winter warming bonfire and give the interlopers a chance to see the winter out in comfort. Break the hollow stems and you will often find little colonies of ladybirds still sleeping there.
Best to find a rough corner for these, or at least give them a chance on the compost heap. In spring you will thank them for their efforts to eradicate the first wave of aphids, but in the meantime, you can have the pleasure of knowing you are providing their winter quarters.
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