How To Prepare Your Plants for Winter | Gardening

Jump to:

A hard frost can undo months of growth in a single night. It wouldn’t be a nice sight walking out to blackened leaves or collapsed stems, would it? Such damage can be avoided, and this guide will show you how.

How to Prepare Your Garden for Winter

This section will walk you through five steps, starting with:

Assess your plants

Walk around your garden and check which plants are hardy, borderline hardy, or tender.

Hardy ones, such as shrubs and perennials, will cope outdoors through winter. Borderline hardy plants like young rosemary or fuchsias may not survive a hard frost. Tender plants, including dahlias and pelargoniums are likely to struggle outside of particular growing environments.

What’s the health of each plant like? Weak growth, damaged stems, or signs of disease increase their likelihood of failing. Assessing them helps you know which needs protecting, which to move, and which may not make it through.

Clean up and prune

After checking which plants are worth keeping, clear the ground around them. Rake up fallen leaves and pull out any debris. If you leave it, slugs and other pests will shelter there, and damp piles of leaves often spread rot.

Remove any dead or diseased branches or stems to prevent problems from spreading. Don’t go heavy on pruning tender plants now, though. The top growth gives them a bit of cover against frost. Keep it light and only tidy what’s damaged or unhealthy.

Water and fertilise

Soil that’s kept damp holds more warmth than dry soil. A good drink before a frost helps protect the roots, as long as it’s not waterlogged. Do it earlier in the day; otherwise, water may sit on the surface overnight.

Stop feeding plants towards the end of summer and let them harden off instead. Fertiliser at this stage only pushes out soft new shoots, and those are the first to be hit by frost.

Move and cover plants

If frost is on the way, shift container plants into a shed, garage, or porch. Move them into a cooler room indoors if the temperature is dropping close to freezing for a stretch.

For plants that have to stay outside, cover them with a fleece, hessian, or burlap. Plastic traps moisture, which then freezes against the leaves, so steer clear of that.

Taller plants (if you have them) can be awkward to protect. Knock a few bamboo canes into the soil around them and tie them at the top like a wigwam. Drape fleece over the frame and tie it down to shelter them.

Mulch and insulate

Spread about 5 to 10 cm of straw, bark, or well-rotted manure around the base of your plants. This will double as a blanket for the soil and roots, in addition to covering. It also blocks out light, which helps keep winter weeds down.

Be careful not to pile mulch right up against stems to keep damp and rot at bay. Try making a ring around the base rather than a mound on top. And when spring comes and new shoots start pushing through, pull the mulch back to allow the soil to warm up again.

How to Prepare Perennials for Winter

Hardy perennials don’t need moving – just leave them in the ground and spread mulch around the base. That little bit of cover will protect them when the soil freezes and thaws.

For tender perennials, dig them up and store them in a shed, greenhouse, or unheated spare room. If you’d rather leave them where they are, give them a layer of heavy mulch around the base. Also, wrap the tops with fleece or hessian to shield them from frost.

Whichever method you choose, check on them at intervals during the cold spell.

Other Ways to Care for Plants in Winter

Cold weather not only tests the plants, but it tests their containers and supports, too. Terracotta pots can split when water freezes inside them – raise them off the ground with bricks or pot feet. That way, water can drain, and the pots won’t sit in puddles.

Pests don’t vanish in the cold either. Slugs and snails hide under mulch or in empty pots, then emerge on milder days. Have a quick look around and clear anything that gives them shelter.

Strong winds and heavy rain often loosen stakes. Push them back in if stems start leaning, or swap them if they’ve snapped. Check the base of plants too; if mulch or soil has built up against the stems, scrape it back to prevent rot.

On milder days, watch plants under covers. Pull them off for a while or crack open a shed or greenhouse door to let air move through. If wraps stay on, they trap heat and damp.