Why Do We Cut Down the Garden at the End of the Season?

by Nori
(Craftsbury and Albany areas of Vermont, USA)

One fine October day, my friend and I were cutting down an extensive perennial garden that followed a picket fence around the borders of the lawn in front of a client's house, and the substantial, wide bed we were working in ran along the outside of the fence on one side of the front garden.

We were more than half finished when a woman came out from the house next door, across the strip of lawn between my client's garden and the row of trees that marked the property line. The woman said hello, we responded, and she looked interested in what we were doing, asking, "Why are you cutting down that garden?"

Pausing in my labour, I stood up straight and answered, "Well, mostly it's so that things look neat and clean for the change of seasons, but also if there happen to be any insect pests or diseases in any of the plants, removing the vegetative top growth would get rid of them before they could winter over and become established in the garden.

But," I continued, "since we're removing all this vegetative growth from the beds, there is no material to rot back into the soil and replace the nutrients that were used for its growth.

So in order to avoid starving the soil and its microorganisms, we would be putting on a couple of inches of compost mulch. We would apply the mulch once the ground froze, which would protect the roots of the plants from the alternative freezing and thawing that happens as the seasons change into winter and back out again in the spring, and then once we'd raked off the chunky debris from the winter, next spring we'd cultivate the mulch into the soil.

I paused, thinking that I'd covered all aspects of her question pretty well, and she said, "Yes, but that's my garden!"