Fall Garden Cleanup - Quick & Easy Steps

This is sort of a backwards Before & After! Haha! This is one of my flower gardens earlier this summer, looking all cute and pretty.

Here is the same garden in October. I made over my whiskey barrel planter for fall (you can see how I makeover all my summer planters for fall here). The Fall Whiskey Barrel Planter is really the only thing that's looking cute in this garden in mid-October. We've already had a few light frosts and plants are looking pretty shabby.

When the plants are looking shabby, that's when it's time to clean it all up. The first thing I did to cleanup this garden was pull all the annuals. Next, I took my trusty weed whacker and chopped down all the perennials that are done. I left the purple asters because they are still looking good. I also left snapdragons, because I would like to get some reseeding from them.

Here's the after - pretty forlorn looking isn't it. There are lots more leaves to fall, so we will still have a fair amount of raking to do. I will leave a good covering of leaves for protection in this area, because it's close to a four lane road and gets lots of snow and salt from the street. This flower bed needs lots of spring flowers, so I'll be planting some spring bulbs in this garden in the next week or so. If you need some excellent tips on planting spring bulbs, check out my blog link at the bottom of this post.

Some gardeners don't do any fall garden cleanup at all, but I find that if I take the time to tidy things up in the fall, it makes gardening go smoother in the spring. To get all the tips for cleaning up your gardens in the Fall and getting them ready for winter, please stop by Gingham Gardens for the full post. I would love to have you pay a visit. Happy Gardening until the snow flies!