While diseased plants and leaves should be removed from your flowerbeds,  leaving plant debris, seed heads, plant stalks, and leaf litter provides much needed winter shelters and food for beneficial insects and birds. 

Forging urban birds like juncos, sparrows and chickadees need your plant’s seeds for food, and beneficial insects, like butterflies and moths, winter over on flower and ornamental grass stalks. So, by cutting and cleaning out flowerbed debris you are doing more harm than good by disrupting your garden’s natural habitat.

Rethink fall clean up, resist the urge to remove all the debris, keep it until spring because the wildlife depends on it! It also provides mulch to protect plants during cold weather. 

Carlotta Lucas, AGC Member  

Photo by: Carlotta Lucas – Caterpillar on Salvia Stalk (10/22/2020)