Autumn: The Season That Sets Up Your Spring

There is a temptation, once the last dahlias have flowered and the evenings are drawing in, to shut the shed door and forget the garden until spring. Resist it. Autumn is arguably the most productive season of the year. The soil is still warm from summer, the air is cool and damp, and plants are winding down rather than pushing out new growth. That combination makes it the ideal moment to plant, move, divide, mulch and protect. Get the next few weeks right and you will spend far less time in March rescuing half-hardy casualties.

None of the jobs below are difficult, and most can be tackled in short bursts on a dry afternoon.

Clear the Leaves Before They Smother the Borders

Fallen leaves are the biggest task of the season, and also the most valuable free resource in the garden. A thick layer left on a lawn will yellow the grass within a fortnight, while a soggy carpet over low-growing alpines, heathers and small bulbs can rot the crowns outright.

• Rake lawns weekly rather than waiting for the last leaf to fall. Light, frequent passes are far easier than one heavy clearance in December.
• Leave a few drifts under hedges and around shrubs — they shelter frogs, hedgehogs and ground beetles, and slowly feed the soil.
• Bag the rest in old compost sacks punched with a few holes, or in a wire bin, and leave them for a year. Leafmould is superb for mulching woodland plants and improving heavy clay.
• Sweep paths and steps, too. Wet leaves on paving are genuinely slippery, and clearing guttering and drains now prevents water pooling against the house later.

Cut Back, But Don't Tidy Too Hard

Herbaceous perennials that have gone brown and floppy — hardy geraniums, peonies, nepeta, phlox — can be cut back to a few centimetres above ground once the foliage collapses. Clear the debris rather than leaving it on the border, as it harbours slugs and can spread fungal problems.

But do not strip everything. There is a strong argument for leaving the architectural plants standing: sedum heads, echinacea cones, teasels, ornamental grasses and the hollow stems of hellebores and Japanese anemones. They look wonderful rimed with frost, they feed the birds, and hollow stems are exactly where solitary bees and ladybirds overwinter.

Two practical rules. Never cut into the soggy, waterlogged stems of penstemons and salvias — wait until spring, when you can see where new growth begins. And leave any borderline-hardy shrub alone until late spring, because pruning now encourages soft growth that frost will kill.

Protect Tender Plants Before the First Real Frost

This is the job that separates a garden which comes through winter intact from one needing a wholesale replant in May. Do it in stages, and do not wait for a forecast of minus five.

• Tender tubs: pelargoniums, fuchsias, agapanthus and citrus should move under cover — a greenhouse, cool conservatory or bright porch.
• Dahlias and cannas: either lift the tubers after the first blackening frost, dry them off and store in barely damp compost, or leave them in and cap the crowns with a thick mulch of bark or straw.
• Tender perennials such as salvia and penstemon: mulch deeply around the crown, but keep the mulch clear of the stems.
• Tree ferns: pack the crown with straw and tie the fronds up over it. Banana plants can be cut back to the trunk and wrapped in fleece and straw.
• Terracotta pots crack when the compost freezes and expands. Raise pots onto feet or bricks so water drains, and bring small ones under cover.

Fleece and bubble wrap are useful, but remember that wrapping traps damp as well as warmth. Ventilate on mild, dry days.

Look After the Soil, the Lawn and the Bones of the Garden

Stay off wet clay soil. Walking on it compacts it into something resembling concrete, and the damage lasts for years. Where you can reach from a board or a path, spread a generous mulch of well-rotted manure or compost over bare ground; worms will work it in through winter.

Lawns need one last cut on a high setting, and a light scarify if thatch has built up. Apply an autumn feed — low in nitrogen, higher in potassium — to toughen the grass. Keep off a frosty lawn entirely, as footprints on frozen blades leave brown scars that linger.

The bones of the garden matter too: clean and store canes, stakes and supports, service the mower, sharpen and oil tools, and check fences, trellis and greenhouses for loose panes and rotten posts before the gales arrive.

Jobs for the Veg Patch and a Few Finishing Touches

Clear spent crops, but do not leave bare soil over winter. Sow a green manure such as field beans or grazing rye, or spread compost and let the weather do the work. Lift and store root crops before the ground freezes hard.

Then plant. Autumn is the best time to get bare-root trees, roses and hedging into the ground, and to plant spring bulbs — daffodils first, tulips as late as November. Water new plantings if the weather turns dry.

One dry afternoon a week through October and November is all most of this takes. Do that, and you will walk out next spring into a garden that is already ahead of itself.