We really enjoy working in this garden. It’s not your usual suburban garden, and is filled with a variety of sub tropical plants. Today we started preparing these plants for a British winter.
We started off by adding a thick layer of straw around the crowns of the Gunnera. We packed it in quite thickly to ensure that the crowns are protected during the winter. You can see above, the new growth coming from the crowns, where we started to add the mulch.
It was a very therapeutic job to do on a Monday morning. Gunnera is a herbaceous perennial that may need protection from frost damage during the winter. It’s not fully hardy in the UK, so it’s important to take steps to protect it. You can use any trimmed leaves to cover the crown, or straw, other dry leaves or shredded paper.
Then, we moved our attention to the Ginger Lilies that are in three different places in the garden. The straw is of a decent quality and isn’t dusty, and is also free from seed.
These perennial plants can tolerate frost, although they need a bit of extra insulation during the winter months to protect them from long periods of freezing temperatures. In most areas of the UK, a generous topping of dry mulch over the crown of the plant is sufficient protection against snow or deep frosts.
We got rather soaked crawling under these large plants, but it was good fun to be in the undergrowth, which felt like it was part of a different world.
You can remove the protective layer in the springtime when the weather starts warming up, or leave it to mulch the soil.
Check back in with us soon, to see what we’re up to with our next garden maintenance project.
