Rejuvenating a Garden Bed
This fall give your garden beds a much needed makeover – new plan, new plants, new life!
September is a great time of year to lend your attention to garden bed rejuvenation! The soil is warm, the air is cool, and there are some great sales happening at your local garden centre.
Gardening is a fluid process – there are always new plants to try, hard landscaping features to add, you may need more or less room for annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs. Positive change in a garden is good!
There is a very practical side to rejuvenating garden beds – especially perennial beds. The plants are looking tired and many of the flowering perennials produce fewer flowers each season or are not flowering at all.
Your garden bed(s) may be overgrown. Perennials and shrubs are crowding each other out. Plants are getting out of hand and the whole area looks messy.
Hopefully you previously made a true to scale map of your bed(s) to plan out what plants you would like to keep, throw away, trade or donate. Mark the mature size of any trees, shrubs and perennials you would like to keep on your map. Allow some spaces for annuals and spring flowering bulbs. Take note of the beds' sun exposure. If there are trees and shrubs in this bed, they obviously have grown in the past few years, perhaps creating some shady areas that once were sunny. Make sure to include any pathways in your design.
Below are a few tips to help you through the rejuvenation process.
Not all of these tips may work for you. Pick and choose from these bed rejuvenation steps to help you on your way to a new landscape!
First of all, take pictures from bed rejuvenation start to finish. Memories fade over the winter; writing things down is great, but pictures are the best reminder of the work you did in fall. Large bed rejuvenation may take autumn and the following spring to accomplish!
As one of the first steps, take out all weeds. Remove weed roots as well. Do not compost.
If you want to change the shape of your bed out into the lawn, use a flexible rubber hose to help create a new outline. Mark the hose outline with a spray paint that is safe for lawns, soils and you. Remove the sod – another fun job……..Sod stripping machines are available to rent, making this job a lot easier!
Tag each plant in the bed with their common name and latin (botanical) name. If you are going to divide perennials, give extras away or take them to plant swaps, tag these too.
Take out any small features such as bird baths, benches, statuary and fountains.
Remove and divide any perennials you would like to keep for yourself, give to friends, or trade at perennial plant exchanges. Lightly trim back any foliage. Some can be relocated to other parts of your garden. If you have to wait for spring to buy new plants, so be it. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Leave spaces where the new plants will grow. Record everything on your map.
Be careful digging out plants around the trees or shrubs you want to keep – disturb the root systems as little as possible.
If you are keeping any perennial divisions to replant, wrap the roots in wet newspaper and store in an open box in a shady location out of the wind. Check these daily. The roots must stay moist. Perennials can be stored outside for a few days until replanting. When replanting use a water soluble rooting hormone fertilizer and drench once during the final watering.
Before the new soil is added to your bed, fix any drainage issues that you are aware of. This step can be very boring but is extremely important. Proper grading of your property (away from your home – away from your garden beds and any pathways) will prevent a lot of drainage problems. Weeping tile should be wrapped in landscape fabric before burying it below ground. The landscape fabric keeps the soil from entering the holes in the tile which prevents future soil blockages and collapse.
A garden bed rejuvenation is your chance to improve the quality of your tired soil. We gardeners like to call it ‘amending the soil’. It is the most important addition you can make to your bed(s). Spend any extra money in your budget on a top quality soil that has compost as its base. For extra soil aeration add coir fibre to the soil mix. Coir fibre does not break down as quickly as peat, and aerates the soil. Layer this new soil onto the bed at a depth of 7.5 to 10 cm. Rake it into the whole bed area; do not dig it in. The nutrients will trickle down through the soil over time. Your plants will love you for it!
Water the whole area and let it settle for a day or two. This will help you determine where the high and low spots are in your bed. If needed, add more soil and rake to level and grade.
When you get to the planting stage of your project – please space your divided and new plants out properly. Allow room for the eventual mature plant size. That means the new bed may look somewhat sparse the first couple of years, but you can fill in the empty spaces with annuals. This is especially important for tree and shrub placement. And trust me, it will save you time and money in the future!
The end of September into October is also the time to plant any fall bulbs (spring flowering) such as tulips, crocus and daffodils. If you are planting spring flowering bulbs, deep water those planting areas only once after planting to avoid bulb rot.
Mulching your rejuvenated bed is up to you. If you are waiting until next spring to add a few more perennials, mulch around the existing new plants with compost, making sure you do not mulch tight up against the stems or woody bark of the trees and shrubs. Over a period of time, wet mulch leads to wet stems and bark, causing rot and eventual plant death. Other mulches that can be used are fine wood bark mulch or leaf mold.
A word about landscape fabric. While I appreciate that landscape fabric has its place in the gardening world, I do not recommend it for use in your garden beds. (I feel the same way about white landscape rock). Over a few seasons it will punch through the mulch; look horrible, ragged and ugly. Weed seeds will take root on bark mulch and while these are relatively easy to pull out, will sometimes root through the old landscape fabric.
As a gardener, always remember that patience is a virtue. Plants need time to root and mature. It may take two or three springs to fully reap the rewards of all your hard work.
Rejuvenating a garden bed is a lot of work but is so satisfying when you are done. Make sure all the plants in the new bed are watered in up until the soil begins to freeze.