Why we leave the seedheads standing

Every October a few clients ask us, kindly, when we are going to tidy up. The borders have browned, the grasses have collapsed into their neighbours, and the instinct to cut everything to the ground and rake it clean runs deep. We usually ask them to give us until Christmas — and by January most of them have stopped asking.

A border cut to the ground in October is a border with nothing to say until April. Left standing, it keeps talking all winter: teasel and echinacea hold their dark seedheads against low sun, the grasses catch every frost, and on the right morning a stand of phlomis looks better than it did in July.

What we leave, and what we don’t

• Echinacea, rudbeckia and teasel — the strongest architecture, and the goldfinches strip them through November
• Grasses of every kind — miscanthus, calamagrostis and deschampsia carry frost like nothing else
• Phlomis and sedum — their seedheads hold their shape into February
• Anything collapsed, slimy or smothering a neighbour — out it comes; standing dead is a look, rotting mush is not

There is a practical argument too. Hollow stems shelter overwintering insects, seedheads feed the birds, and the dead top growth protects each crown from the worst of the frost. The garden pays for its winter beauty with a healthier spring.

We make one cut, in late February, just as the bulbs begin to push through — low, quick and all at once. Six weeks later you would never know the border had been anything but immaculate.