When to Clean Up Your Wildlife Garden
(it’s not when you think)
Summary: When is a good time to clean up the garden? Contrary to popular belief, there's never an ideal time to clean up your garden. Beneficial insects are vulnerable to garden clean up activities at all times of the year due to their varied biological cycles. Common temperature-based guidelines can be misleading, so it's crucial to really stop and question whether clean up is necessary at all before grabbing the rake or pruning shears.
When Should You Clean Up The Garden?
It is the big question that makes its rounds every year: When is a good time to clean up the garden? It’s usually around the same time you see the squirrels raking leaves while the chickadees start to sharpen their pruning shears.
In other words: NEVER.
Joking aside, there truly is never a good time to clean up your garden, despite what the internet memes say (but there are less bad ways to clean up which we will get into). Popular gardening memes tell us that its okay to clean up the garden once air and/or soil temperatures are consistently above 10 degrees celcius (50F) in the spring. This figure is misleading, because it doesn’t account for the fact that different insects have different biological cycles and become active at different times of the year.
The Hidden Impacts of Garden Clean-Up
Top: Evening Primrose Moth (Schinia florida) Bottom: Goldenrod Soldier Beetle (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus)
Consider the Evening Primrose Moth (Schinia florida) as an example. This stunning pink moth typically appears in late July, coinciding with the availability of its larval food source, the flower buds and green/unripe seed pods of evening primrose (Oenothera biennis). The moth deposits its eggs on the flower buds or seed pods, and after 4-5 days, the larvae emerge to feed on them. Once matured, the larvae burrow into the soil for pupation, where they spend the winter, awaiting the emergence of next year's evening primrose pods to lay their own eggs.
Disturbance of garden soil during clean-up activities can disrupt or destroy pupation sites, impacting the moth's ability to complete its lifecycle.
Garden clean-up activities can impact more than just the Evening Primrose Moth. For example, Goldenrod Soldier Beetles (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus) rely on sites with moist soil and leaf litter to lay their eggs, typically in late spring. By summertime, the larvae emerge, feeding on worms, slugs, snails, and small insects (natures pest control, similar to ladybird larvae) within the leaf litter until they're ready to pupate in the fall. They spend the winter under the leaf litter, emerging as adults in late spring to restart their lifecycle.
Clearing fallen leaves and dead vegetation during spring or fall clean-up may inadvertently disrupt the overwintering habitat of the beetle, whether its 10degrees outside or not.
Cleaning up a garden is not only a completely unnatural and counter productive thing to do, but it helps promotes separation between our gardens and nature. Your bedroom needs to be cleaned up (join the club) but your garden doesn’t need to be cleaned up because it’s simply not dirty.
Fallen leaves are not dirty, they are food for soil microbes and winter shelter for mourning cloak butterflies (Nymphalis antiopa). Standing stems are not dirty, they are nesting habitat for green sweat bees and provide our eyes with winter beauty. A rotten log is not dirty, it is a hotel for insects and a buffet for birds. Mushrooms are not an infection, they are a sign that your soil is healthy.
Rethinking Garden Clean Up
As natural gardeners we need to learn to give more control back to nature in the garden. After all, gardens are not extensions of our homes and don’t need to be held to the same cleanliness standards. Now, I understand that gardens are human-made spaces and will always require input and management. However we should always seek to manage our gardens consciously, looking to find balance between the needs of humans with the needs of nature. Therefore, it is time for natural gardeners to shift from a "clean-up" mindset to a "management" mindset.
This spring, or fall, ask yourself what parts of traditional garden clean-up are truly necessary and how you can alter your approach to find a balance between the needs of nature and humans.
9 Spring Cleanup Management Tips For Your Garden
A native bee emerges from its nest in the ground in early spring.
Do “as little as possible, as late as possible” when it comes to spring garden chores. According to the Xerces society waiting to get stuck into the garden until after pear and apple blossoms have faded will give enough time for most native bees to emerge (most, not all).
Find a middle ground between societal aesthetic norms and the needs of wildlife by leaving plant stems standing over winter. Many bees like nesting in cavities such as old stems. If you must cut them back in the spring, leave at least 30cm standing to leave enough room for this years bees to nest. For perennial stems that have fallen over winter, simply cut them at the fold and leave them lying on the ground as mulch. Many birds will use fibers from old stems to build their nests.
Leave the leaves where they fall in your garden beds. Only removing them for practical reasons such as if matted leaves are smothering emerging plants. If you have too many leaves in one spot, either shift them to the side or move them to a designated wild area in your yard. Do not shred or burn them.
Minimize digging and edging tasks as much as possible until late spring. Spades or forks can easily harm toads who are still buried in the soil.
Pruning typically doesn’t harm insects but keep an eye out for overwintering chrysalises and cocoons.
Avoid wood mulch (except during a garden’s establishment years while they are still small) because it prevents ground nesting bees from making nests or emerging from them. Ditch the wood mulch and follow the principles of natural garden design instead by covering the ground with living, green mulch.
Experiment by not cleaning up a small section of your yard to start with!
Install a yard sign to show others why you are leaving your garden to be messy (messy by traditional standards that is).
Accept the fact that you are a garden rebel and will love your natural garden despite what neighbors think. No positive change ever came from living within the confines that others place on us!
