My question back in autumn was ‘which perennials should I cut back now and which should I leave over winter?’

There are of course benefits to each, things certainly look neat and tidy.

If you choose to cut back or by leaving the spent flower heads/pods and stalks you will add winter interest to an otherwise bleak landscape, provide food and shelter for wildlife.

Some perennials are more likely to survive the cold weather if they aren’t cut back - Kniphofia (red hot poker) and Aster frikartii being just a couple.

You may have to do a bit of extra weeding in spring for some of the flowers that tend to self-sow rather over enthusiastically like Rudbeckia and Echinacea but its a small price to pay.

Well if like me you did a bit of both, the ones that were left will now need cutting back before the new growth comes through.

Everything’s getting the chop including my sedums, which I’ve taken right back to the base and my grasses have also had the hard prune with secateurs and then the dead debris pulled from the centre of the clump by hand.

Wisteria Winter Pruning

Wisteria puts on so much growth each year it quickly looks out of control without its winter prune.

Each new shoot that has grown from the previous season needs to be shortened back to two or three buds.

The buds on these spurs will then swell and produce cascades of sweet smelling blooms. Try to cut at an angle above an outward facing bud.

Adding a bit of warmth…

Clearing out the greenhouse, although not a particularly exciting job, did have some benefits.

I still had quite a few chillies sitting happily on their plants. I have made some chilli oil with them.

I popped them into sterilised kilner bottles covered with rapeseed oil, which I warmed through with a handful of chilli flakes crushed from the dried chilli pods and sealed them ready to splash on to anything we need warming up!