One Last Garden Chore

By now all the garden clean-up is done. The leaves are hopefully chopped and put in your compost pile or left on the grass and gardens.  The produce has all been eaten or preserved. Fall always makes me a little sad.  The bright colors of the garden have turned to browns and golds.  I took a walk around the garden yesterday and was surprised that there are still some beautiful sights.

Cheyenne privet is a wonderful shrub.  It grows quickly into a privacy hedge, takes well to shearing, and gets these dark blue berries in fall.

Smokebush is one of my favorite shrubs for color all the time, especially in fall.

The lavender was still blooming last week, and it still smells wonderful.

Snapdragons keep blooming even though we've had frost several times.

Before you say goodbye to your garden, there's one more thing you might want to do.  Remember last winter?  Our gardening business was busy in spring taking out dead Alberta spruce and yews.  We have plenty of both in our yard.  We plan on providing protection this winter. We didn't lose any shrubs, but we have some topiaries that had winter kill in spots and didn't recover.  The deer have also done a lot of damage to our arborvitaes in the past.

This arborvitae was a yummy deer snack.

Last year we wrapped the arborvitaes with plastic mesh and the deer were foiled.  In addition to that, we're going to wrap the Alberta spruce and yews with burlap.  It's a pain, but not even close to the work of digging out dead shrubs, not to mention the expense of buying new ones.  It's also important to give evergreens a good soak before the ground freezes.  They continue to lose moisture through their needles all winter.  The extra effort might be worthwhile when you consider the investment you have in your landscape.