What to leave standing in your garden’s fall cleanup
Fall is garden cleanup time, but that doesn’t mean you should turn your property into a barren wasteland. PLANTS TO KEEP Leave perennials that produce seed heads standing over winter to feed nonmigratory birds and provide shelter for pollinators and beneficial insects. These include allium, aster, big-leaf lupine, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, coneflower, goldenrod, milkweed, rattlesnake master, sneezeweed and trumpet vine, among others. Most spring-blooming shrubs produce their flowers on “old wood,” which is the prior year’s growth. Cutting them back now would ...
