Daily details from the garden to bring you inspiration throughout the year
You can remove dead stems with seed heads from your borders without having to deprive wildlife of either food or a place to sleep over winter – just make a cut at ground level and transport them whole to another area of the garden. Having got that out of the way, then, quite when to cut down the tall and brooding stems of this summer’s cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) is very much a matter of personal taste. I tend to leave them right through the winter, tattered leaves flapping in the breeze like ragged angel wings, and enjoy their presence during the colder months. However, I can’t see them from the house, and can quite understand how having them staring in the window at you could be unsettling on a dark and quiet night. Today’s cardoons got the chop, long stiffened corpses carried reverently to the composting area where doubtless I’ll ramble on to them for many weeks yet. Plenty of new life bursting out of the ground, with fresh foliage far more blue than surely any has a right to be.
A year of garden coaching
I’m very excited about my new venture – it’s a way for me to work with more people than I can physically get around to, helping them to make the very best of their gardens in a way that suits the life they lead. If you’d like to find out more, please click here to book for a January 2020 start.
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Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, blogger, podcaster, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking the image above.
