How do I prepare a garden for winter?

Winter preparation is partly protection and partly restraint. The protective jobs are genuinely worth doing; the tidying instinct is worth resisting in places, because hollow stems, seedheads and leaf piles are where a lot of garden wildlife overwinters.

What you'll need

• Mulch — compost, bark or leaf mould
• Horticultural fleece
• Secateurs
• Oil and a cloth for tools
• Pot feet or a sheltered spot for containers (optional)

Step by step

1. Mulch beds with 5–8cm of compost or leaf mould once the soil is still warm but growth has stopped.Late autumn. It insulates roots, suppresses weeds and feeds the soil over winter.
2. Move tender plants under cover, or wrap them with fleece where they stand.Check each plant's hardiness rather than guessing — many 'tender' plants survive a mild winter outdoors in a sheltered spot.
3. Lift dahlia and begonia tubers in colder areas, or mulch heavily and leave them in milder ones.In much of southern Britain, a thick mulch is now enough for dahlias.
4. Empty terracotta and ceramic pots or raise them on feet.Water in the pot freezes and expands, which is what cracks them. Raising them improves drainage.
5. Drain hoses, turn off and insulate outside taps.Frozen outside taps and their pipework are among the most common winter burst points.
6. Clean, sharpen and oil tools before storing them.Twenty minutes in autumn saves buying replacements in spring.
7. Leave seedheads, hollow stems and a leaf pile in a corner.Insects overwinter in hollow stems and hedgehogs in leaf piles. Birds eat the seedheads.
8. Clear fallen leaves off lawns and paths, but pile them up rather than binning them.Leaves smother grass and make paths slippery, but they make excellent leaf mould in a year.
9. Check tree ties, stakes and fence posts before the winter gales.Autumn is when a loose stake becomes a snapped tree.

Tips

• Leaf mould is the easiest free soil improver there is: bag the leaves, punch a few holes, leave for a year.
• Don't cut everything back hard in autumn. Many perennials protect their own crowns with their dead growth, and cutting to the ground exposes them.
• Group container plants together against a sheltered wall — they protect each other and the wall radiates warmth.
• Order seeds and plan next year over winter. It's the one gardening job that's genuinely pleasant in January.

Common mistakes

• Cutting everything back to bare soil — Removes overwintering habitat and exposes plant crowns to frost.
• Leaving pots full of wet compost outside — Freezing water expands and cracks terracotta and ceramic.
• Forgetting the outside tap — A frozen and burst outside tap often floods into the house wall.
• Mulching over frozen ground — You insulate the cold in. Mulch while the soil still has some warmth.

Questions people ask