Cutting back in March, and what the hollow stems were holding
I left the border standing over its first winter on purpose, partly for the look of frosted seedheads, which was lovely for about three mornings and then just brown, and partly because everything I read said the stems shelter insects. The cutting back happened on the first dry weekend of March, with the soil cold but no longer sticky, and I did it slowly enough to see what the stems had been holding.
The hollow stems of the fennel-like seedheads at the back came apart in the hand, and out of six or seven of them came ladybirds, sometimes two or three to a stem, slow and dusty and clearly not pleased. I counted twenty-three in total before I stopped counting, and left the cut stems in a loose pile at the back of the border for a fortnight so anything still inside could leave in its own time. There were small spiders in the astrantia heads, and in one of the grasses a nest of something that turned out, when I looked closely, to be mouse-sized and empty.
Everything herbaceous was cut to within about 5 cm of the ground with secateurs and shears, except the hair grass, which was combed through with gloved fingers to pull out the dead blades and leave the green, and the sedums, whose old heads came off with a tug. The salvias I left at about 15 cm because the new shoots were already showing at the base and the old stems protect them from a late frost. Three barrowloads came off nine metres of border, which went to the compost bins in the corner cut into hand lengths.
Then the mulch. About 5 cm of half-finished compost over the whole border, kept clear of the crowns, which took four barrowloads and left the bins empty. The worms had already begun on last autumn’s layer, which was visibly thinner and darker than when it went on. Under it, the clay was still clay, but the top 3 or 4 cm had the crumbly look it has never had before, and I could push a finger in.
Shoots showing on 1 March, for the record: geraniums, alchemilla, astrantia, salvias, sedums, the anemones as red-tinged nubs, and the first leaves of the bulbs I planted in October. Not showing: echinacea, delphiniums or the heleniums. Some of that is lateness and some of it, I suspect, is loss.