Leave the stems for the birds and the bees!

Some readers of the last post on floral imprints might be asking, "why do you have standing dead stems and seed heads in your garden in March? Didn't you do your obligatory fall cleanup last year?" 

No, I did not. Or rather, I tidied up a bit, but left the dead and dying flower stems standing. Notice, I say "dying stems" instead of "dying plants," because the perennial natives I planted do not die each winter. 

Like a bear gorging on food in preparation for its long slumber, these plants draw the nutrients in their above-ground portions down into their roots in the fall to be stored as carbohydrates. The roots are dormant all winter, then when spring comes around that stored energy is ready to produce new stems and leaves.

But why leave the stems if they're dead and brown and ugly? There are so many reasons, I'll just mention a few. For starters, the seeds are little packets of stored energy that provide critical overwintering nutrition to our songbirds. 

The pithy or hollow stems also provide overwintering shelter for numerous species of native bees and other stem-nesting insects. Without this shelter and nourishment, these animals cannot survive winter. 

And these seed heads are about as far from unsightly as it gets. They provide a gorgeous display for those who know how to look. The jubilant purples, oranges, whites and yellows of summer and fall give way to every variety of brown, chocolate, hazel and umber. Each species of plant has its own winter shape and personality—some wispy and some bold; some precise and some impressionistic. 

And as if that's not enough, their appearance shifts over the course of the winter too. Once distinct pods open and release their fluffy silk, then transforming into papery wisps. Once the feathery pappus of certain plants disperses in the wind, the hardened calyx that remains becomes a little winter flower, complete with chestnut centers and carmel petals. 

And where snowfall on a lawn or an over-tidied garden bed provides only a white blanket with little visual interest, each little pile of snow meticulously perched upon standing seed heads becomes its own fleeting sculpture. 

So please go ahead and perform some basic fall tidying so that your neighbors don't think you're neglecting your yard. And when spring rolls around, if you wish, you can cut the taller stems to 18-24 inches. The cut portions can simply be dropped on the ground as a mulch (don't cut the stems all the way to the ground or destroy the cut portions because the bee larvae inside are completing their metamorphosis; the longer you wait to cut in spring, the better). But please leave the ecologically critical and visually fascinating stems and seed heads all winter for your human and non-human neighbors to enjoy.