trekking?
gardening
BY RACHEL FOSTER
medical advice for
global travelers
T HE T RAVEL C LINIC
John D. Wilson, M.D.
1200 Hilyard St., Suite S-560 • 343-6028
Start traveling healthy today at www.TravelClinicOregon.com
D ONALD D EXTER J R DMD LLC
DENTISTRY Cleaning Up
"The first wealth is health."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Invest in your health, the returns are abundant.
2233 W ILLAMETTE S T , B LDG B • 541-485-6644
www.drdexter.com
Drinking?
Let us drive!
434-TAXI
OREGON TAXI
AUTHOR EVENTS
AMIT GOSWAMI
God is Not Dead
& Creative Evolution
3&$&15*0/#00,4*(/*/(
.POEBZ /PW
QNt'3&&
(FSMJOHFS"MVNOJ-PVOHF 60$BNQVT
Special performance by the Beta Collide Ensemble
from the UO School of Music
THOR HANSON
Impenetrable Forest
3&"%*/(#00,4*(/*/(4-*%&4
5IVSTEBZ /PW
QNt'3&&
-JMMJT)BMM 60$BNQVT
A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated
to help protect mountain gorillas.
&UI"WFtt60%VDL4UPSFDPN
32 NOVEMBER 13, 2008
EUGENE WEEKLY
Do fall yard and garden work in stages
W
hat a glorious fall we’ve had this
year, and I am not just referring
to the election. The crapshoot
that is Oregon weather brought not only great
wine grapes and an embarrassment of apples
and pears to the Willamette Valley but also
fall color like we haven’t seen in decades.
As November approached and I marveled
at the colors in the wider landscape, I also
appreciated the smaller, subtler effects in
my own garden as perennials, shrubs and
grasses prepare for dormancy.
Like many fl ower gardeners, I’ve
concluded there is too much to lose from
cutting down and removing a whole season’s
biomass in an October clean-up. Particularly
this year. After a brief period of chilly but
(at least here in town) frost-free nights,
the weather has turned mild. What isn’t
arrayed in yellow or scarlet is still fresh.
Some ornamental grasses are still green and
vibrant, while anemones, fuchsias, dahlias,
cannas and the occasional rose provide
mementoes of summer glories.
Late color isn’t the only thing we sacrifi ce
in the name of clean-up. Beetles and spiders
overwinter in cozy perennial clumps, and
birds enjoy foraging for seed; a layer of
coarse organic debris prevents compaction
from rain. All the same, most of this detritus
must go to the compost heap eventually,
and there are both horticultural and esthetic
reasons for doing it sooner rather than later.
Fallen leaves left lying on evergreen
plants can result in bald spots. Diseased
foliage on roses and irises and rotting,
rain-soaked blooms increase your garden’s
bank of fungal spores. A few plants, notably
kniphofi as and some irises, are easier to
cut back before they rot, while others look
just plain ugly beyond a certain stage of
decomposition.
A bit of clean-up makes it easier to plant
bulbs in perennial and shrub borders. It also
makes a more attractive setting for emerging
bulbs in early spring and may help keep you
out of sensitive beds in February, when the
ground is wet and the emerging snouts of
bulbs are especially vulnerable.
If you do go in for clean-up and prefer
to do it in stages, what should be your
priorities? Starting in the areas you see
most often, clean up around small evergreen
shrubs so you can actually enjoy them.
They will also benefi t from more light
and improved air circulation. Remove
seedheads from things that self-sow wildly
— it will save work later. Clean up diseased
foliage and any frosted plant tops. Mulch
exposed soil wherever possible.
Care of ornamental grasses can be
confusing because they vary so much in
their life cycles. Some change color rapidly
in autumn and then collapse. Clean these up
any time. Some adopt fall colors gradually
and remain standing well into the new year.
Cutting them down now won’t hurt them,
but as long as you like the way they look, let
them stand. Just remember that if you leave
the clumps uncut much after January new
growth will make the job a lot more diffi cult.
By the way, I belatedly tried that trick of tying
the tops of taller grasses in a bundle before
cutting. It certainly makes for a neater job.
What about grasses that remain green,
bronze or gray all winter? Some of these
may be damaged by cutting back in fall.
Leave them alone until next spring, when
you may fi nd you can remove old blades
with a combing action or a sharp tug on a few
blades at a time. Sedges can be deciduous
or evergreen, and the latter resent being
cut down in fall. Cut them to the ground
in spring, when they already show signs of
new growth. Other things to leave alone in
fall and winter include New Zealand fl ax
(phormium) and semi-hardy shrubs like
lavender, rosemary and plumbago, and
almost anything with silver foliage.
The ever-popular butterfl y bush (Buddleia
davidii) is seriously invasive when it escapes
into natural areas. If you grow buddleia, you
should deadhead it. Since this brittle and
often overbearing shrub is best treated like
a giant perennial, it would seem simplest to
prune it back to a couple of feet in fall, killing
two birds with one stone. Unfortunately,
buddleia is another of those things that may
sulk and even die if it is cut back hard in fall,
so I was interested to learn a while back that
it does not release its seed until late winter.
Late winter is the usual time to prune
buddleia, and the Forest Service offi cial
who told me about this claimed he can trace
the popular routes to yard-waste recycling
yards by the copious butterfl y bushes that
grow along the way! He suggested cutting
plants back part way in fall and discarding
the seedheads before the seed shakes loose.
In early spring, complete the pruning job by
cutting back to a low framework of major
branches
ew
Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author
of All About Gardens, a selection of past EW columns. She
can be reached at rfoster@efn.org
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM